My view: prayer is a kind of thought energy, and it can prompt the natural environment around us to respond. The strength of that thought energy depends on the cultivation of the person praying. As Gao Yueming puts it, “In essence, worshipping the Buddha is not about asking the Buddha for things — it is about asking yourself to create the causes and conditions that bring about the karmic result.” Prayer is thought energy that issues a request for causes and conditions to ripen into results. Take the earthquake in May: during the three minutes of national silence, many people prayed in their hearts for the people in the disaster area. One person’s prayer thought energy may not be much, but the thought energy of 1.3 billion people praying together with good intent can transmit an energy to nature, and that energy can let crustal movement gradually return to stability.
Now let’s look at the answer about prayer on Gao Yueming’s website:
A student asked: “ There is a verse in the Diamond Sutra: ‘If one seeks me in form, or seeks me in sound, that person walks a deviant path and cannot see the Tathagata.’ What is the role of prayer?” The answer to this question is as follows:
First, what does “Tathagata” mean? The Tathagata is also called nature emptiness, the dharma realm, the dharma body, Buddha-nature, true reality, the original mind, and so on. It refers to the essence of all things, the absolutely unchanging “eternal truth.” These terms are all attempts to describe something that is very hard to put into words. Nor is this way of describing it anything mysterious.
For example, if you wanted to describe to an “alien” what the “saltiness” of table salt feels like, all you could send them is this: table salt’s chemical name is sodium chloride; it is a white cubic crystal or a fine crystalline powder; specific gravity 2.165 (25/4℃); melting point 801℃; boiling point 1442℃; pH neutral; readily soluble in water and glycerol; poorly soluble in ethanol. Its unit cell is face-centered cubic, and each unit cell contains 4 sodium ions and 4 chloride ions.
Because the “Tathagata” that the Buddha awakened to is so hard to “say” out loud, many Buddhist sutras were used to describe the characteristics of this “thing.” At the same time, he told the world very clearly that Buddha-nature, the original mind, and the Tathagata ultimately have to be “personally realized” through experience.
The Buddha said that if you seek what the “Tathagata” is through external forms such as the thirty-two marks and a beautiful voice, you have entered a deviant path and cannot realize the true “Tathagata,” because “truth” has no form, no size, no color, and so on.
The central content of Buddhist study is “emptiness,” and emptiness is the original mind, the Tathagata, and so on. Many people have no clear conceptual understanding of “emptiness,” so they get confused by the content involving “emptiness” in many sutras. In my forthcoming book I give a clear explanation of “emptiness.” Following that line of explanation, I believe you will find it much easier to understand the content of the sutras.
If we ask what the role of prayer is, we might as well ask: after we pray and worship the Buddha, what can the Buddha give us?
First, let’s look at why Buddhism exists and what Buddhism can give us. It’s simple: Buddhism was “invented” by the Buddha to resolve people’s “inner” suffering, and so we have the Four Noble Truths: “suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path.”
Today, when we believe in someone’s words and deeds, we hang that person’s “photo” on our own wall. For example, people hang a portrait of Sun Yat-sen on their wall; what they believe in is the great man’s words and deeds, not some divine power he possessed. Buddha statues only appeared six hundred years after the Buddha’s nirvana, so the forms of “worshipping Buddha statues” and “prayer” were invented out of the need to spread the Buddha’s thought. If prayer could get you gold and silver, that would violate the central theory of Buddhism, the “law of cause and effect.” So the essence of prayer is to “pray” for the Buddha’s thought to guide your own mind and behavior — guidance that frees you from suffering and lets you gain happiness.
Think about it: what was the purpose of all those “masters” since ancient times who lectured on the sutras and taught the Dharma? It’s simple — not to show people how to get gold and silver, but to show them how to free themselves from the suffering they currently have in their minds. Even becoming a Buddha ultimately depends on saving yourself. Everything in the world has to be obtained through your own effort. That’s why the Buddha said: in heaven above and on earth below, I alone am the honored one — every person is the master of their own destiny. Everything is the result of the “causes and conditions” you yourself create.
So what the Buddha can give us is his thought, and through prayer we can only receive the “Buddha’s” thought. All joy and happiness still require your own effort. Because there is no such thing as a “god” — every person is a “Buddha,” every person is a “god.” In essence, worshipping the Buddha is not about asking the Buddha for things; it is about asking yourself to create the causes and conditions that bring about the karmic result.
Regarding this question, the asker Shi Mingyan replied as follows:
Thank you for the wonderful answer, teacher!
The law of karmic retribution truly tells us that everyone must take responsibility for their own actions! Whatever you send out, you get back. Suffering and unease are entirely fabricated by your own mind, and likewise only you can change them — the choice is in your hands.
The Buddha once said: everyone possesses wisdom and virtue, but because of delusion and attachment they cannot realize it. Practitioners are all looking for a way out of the cycle of rebirth, but most people are used to believing that some external divine power controls their happiness and can send them to heaven or hell — that is a wrong view. Praying for others to give you material things will not get you anywhere; correct prayer is a kind of self-confident perseverance, a willingness to take the Buddha’s thought as your driving force and a belief that you too can accomplish it perfectly.
Only recently have I begun to understand a little of what it means to let go of outer conditions, to keep the mind undistracted, and to practice meditative concentration. The Buddha and the teacher are like a guide who shows you where to find water: all they can do is point out where the water is. Whether you drink or not is entirely up to you!