Prayer

When a young child speaks to someone who isn't there, we say he has an imaginary friend. When an older child continues to speak to someone who isn't there, we get him psychotherapy. When an adult speaks to someone who isn't there, we either call him schizophrenic or we say he's praying. Prayer can be a conscientious practice of verbalizing those issues and needs which, if recognized in this way, can be addressed. However, infantile begging, addressed to someone who isn't there, is a symptom of poor education or postponed development. Buddhists have been chanting for centuries. Most Westerners confuse chanting with prayer to a deity, since they are raised in monotheistic religions which teach the impotence of man and the omnipotence of the deity. Buddhist chants are the actual repeated, formulated words of the Buddha, who preached his message of personal liberation before widely written records. The sutras are chanted as they were for hundreds of years before they were formally compiled, translated and transcribed. If Christians chanted in this way, they would memorize and regularly repeat the Sermon on the Mount, for example. Not a bad idea.