{"id":251,"date":"2010-02-21T23:23:12","date_gmt":"2010-02-21T15:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hansadutta.com\/hansadutta-as-it-is\/?p=251"},"modified":"2011-05-21T23:23:50","modified_gmt":"2011-05-21T15:23:50","slug":"what-are-you-praying-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hansadutta.com\/hansadutta-as-it-is\/2010\/02\/21\/what-are-you-praying-for\/","title":{"rendered":"What are you praying for?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RYAucQ75P-4\">What Are You Praying For? Chant Hare Krsna and Connect!<\/a><br \/>\n<object classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/RYAucQ75P-4&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><embed type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/RYAucQ75P-4&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\"><\/embed><\/object><br clear=\"all\" \/>HANSADUTTA: When you say &#8220;prayers&#8221;, what are you praying for? Everyone is actually praying at all times. When you go to the bank and ask for a loan, it&#8217;s a prayer. &#8220;Sir, I need that fifty thousand dolllars&#8221;\u2014it&#8217;s a prayer. When we go to the university, we pray to the professor, &#8220;Please give me a good mark. Please give me my degree.&#8221; When we go for employment, we go to the interview, we give the person our resume and try to convince them they should hire us, we&#8217;re praying. Candidates for presidency or governor, they go to the public and plead, &#8220;Please give me your vote.&#8221; So everyone is praying.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The quality of the prayer is what we&#8217;re concerned with. And the simplest, most direct, most powerful prayer is simply to vibrate Krishna&#8217;s name. Why is that so? Because it&#8217;s pure. It&#8217;s like pure gold. If someone gives you a lump of pure gold that he found in the Sierra Mondre mountains, you don&#8217;t need to make it into any jewelry. It&#8217;s already valuable. Prabhupada gives this example. In India they have a saying that if you get gold, and it has a nice aroma, that&#8217;s an added attraction. Gold is already valuable, but if it has a pleasant aroma, that&#8217;s even better. So he says that chanting the holy name is like that, it&#8217;s so wonderful and so powerful that it&#8217;s like gold that has a pleasant aroma. Chanting the holy name is Krishna. The process of chanting and the result of chanting are the same. As soon as you chant you&#8217;ve achieved the goal of that chanting. What is that goal? To connect to Krishna. That&#8217;s all. Just to connect to Krishna. That&#8217;s all you need.<\/p>\n<p>QUESTION: What is the difference between this <em>mantra<\/em> and saying, &#8220;O Krishna&#8221; or &#8220;Krishna, Krishna, be my friend&#8221; or why this &#8220;Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna&#8230;&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>HANSADUTTA: That&#8217;s a good question: Why do we chant the <em>mantra<\/em>? All Sanskrit verses, <em>shlokas<\/em> are actually <em>mantras<\/em>. <em>Man<\/em> means &#8220;mind&#8221; and <em>tra<\/em> means &#8220;to deliver&#8221;. So the Hare Krishna <em>mantra<\/em> is known as the Maha Mantra, <em>maha<\/em> meaning &#8220;great&#8221; and <em>mantra<\/em> for deliverance of the mind. It&#8217;s the greatest <em>mantra<\/em>. Of all the <em>mantras<\/em>, this is the greatest <em>mantra<\/em>. This is the epitome, this is the apex. There is nothing more powerful, nothing more pure nor direct.<\/p>\n<p>And the reason we chant it is because our predecessor <em>acharyas<\/em> chanted this <em>mantra<\/em>, and the chanting of this <em>mantra<\/em> is recommended in different <em>shastras<\/em> that this is the only way. What is that verse? <em>Kalau nasty eva nasty eva nasty eva gatir anyatha<\/em>. In this age, there is no other way. So we&#8217;re simply accepting what&#8217;s been given to us by our predecessors. We don&#8217;t have to manufacture anything. But if someone thinks, &#8220;Well, I&#8217;ll just say &#8216;Krishna, Krishna, Krishna&#8217;,&#8221; okay, that&#8217;s nice, but those persons who are really serious will be very attuned to the instructions and the behavior and example of the previous <em>acharyas<\/em>. They will not manufacture anything.<\/p>\n<p>QUESTION: So when was this <em>mantra<\/em> first chanted?<\/p>\n<p>HANSADUTTA: It has always been there. It&#8217;s eternal.<\/p>\n<p>Visit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/allkrsna\">http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/allkrsna<\/a> for more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What Are You Praying For? Chant Hare Krsna and Connect! HANSADUTTA: When you say &#8220;prayers&#8221;, what are you praying for? Everyone is actually praying at all times. When you go to the bank and ask for a loan, it&#8217;s a &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/hansadutta.com\/hansadutta-as-it-is\/2010\/02\/21\/what-are-you-praying-for\/\">more <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,22],"tags":[55,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hansadutta.com\/hansadutta-as-it-is\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hansadutta.com\/hansadutta-as-it-is\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hansadutta.com\/hansadutta-as-it-is\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hansadutta.com\/hansadutta-as-it-is\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hansadutta.com\/hansadutta-as-it-is\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/hansadutta.com\/hansadutta-as-it-is\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hansadutta.com\/hansadutta-as-it-is\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hansadutta.com\/hansadutta-as-it-is\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hansadutta.com\/hansadutta-as-it-is\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}