Since times immemorial, humans have prayed selfishly and shamelessly for worldly benefits. And a genuine debate may ensue about the effectiveness of such prayers.
I mean, are you that important that the creator of the universe, infinitely larger and infinitely older than you should favor you over others who are also as much of His own creation as you are, just because you are asking Him to do so? Imagine how you would feel if you looked in your belly with a very advanced microscope and discovered that a fat cell was praying to you to for nourishment of her own and destruction of the neighboring cells.
And if there are unfathomable forces governing our lives, outside our puny understanding, like millions of Hindu gods, could the way to harness such supernatural forces be as ludicurously simple and selfish as pouring refined butter in fire and chanting of some incomprehensible Sanskrit Shlokas by a cheaply hired priest who negotiates like a pimp?
But today I am going to attack the aspect of prayer which we do understand. What I am saying it that in a lot of our prayers we are asking for the wrong thing. Take an example.
Suppose the case of this 12’th grade Indian student, who is praying Lord Hanuman every day for admission in IIT, the ultimate dream of every Indian teenager. Can the Lord Hanuman somehow get him selected in the entrance exam? That is loaded question actually. We need to consider if the boy is smart enough to be in IIT? Suppose he is not as smart as the guys who get selected in IIT. His selection in that case would mean that some one worthier than him must be knocked out of the list, by some divine intervention. Will Lord Hanuman be willing to do that? Suppose he is and suppose this apparently despotic act is in some diving way justifiable which we mere humans are too slow to comprehend. The only question I am asking here is, should this boy be wishing for it at all? How is he going to gain by this divine treachery?
Do you see what I am saying here? If the boy is not smart enough to get through the entrance examination then it is a torture for him to go to IIT. Because once he is there he will be surrounded by people smarter than him and he would struggle to pass the exams after exams which every one else would be passing effortlessly. And he would constantly get yelled at by his teachers and ridiculed for slowness by his peer. He will have difficulty looking for a job, as he would be possibly among the last few students in his class. And with great difficulty he may find a job where also he would find himself inadequate, constantly ridiculed and blamed for laziness and stupidity. And in the worst case scenario, he would design a bad bridge or something, killing many innocent humans.
So may be our friend is much better off, without Lord Hanuman’s intervention in the things. He would possibly have a heart-break, for not being selected in IIT entrance. But suppose he then went to a low grade local University, did a BA there, had a very good rank in his class, was looked up by his peer, played some cricket with them, fooled around with girls and ended up becoming a primary school teacher. Then may be, he got respect of his students and peer for being a good teacher, and just may be he inspired some underprivileged but extremely talented student to do very good in life. So, he is better off there, much better off, than getting through JEE.
So here is the bottom-line. When we wish for anything we can not achieve effortlessly, we are not only inviting personal pain and frustration, we are also likely to harm others around us.
