Is there any difference between praying and chanting?

From: Sundeep

Instead of Chanting the Name of God, I find praying to him suits me more. Is that ok?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you.
Question by Sandeep. Instead of chanting the names of God, I find praying to Him suits me more. What is your comment about this? Answer, chanting is also a form of praying, in fact chanting is the highest form of praying, because ultimately what is praying? Praying essentially is talking with God.
During prayers, we express our hearts, anxieties, concerns, and desires to God, and isn’t that what we do with somebody whom we love and trust, even in this world? And when we do that with somebody in this world, we call it talking. So, prayer is nothing but talking with God. Now, of course, talking with God also requires us to become qualified to be able to access Him, and especially to access His response.
So, God does not keep Himself distant or remote or inaccessible from us, but often we, by our own materialistic consciousness, and materialistic desires, are unable to perceive God’s presence, God’s voice, or God’s response to our prayers. So, therefore, the more we are spiritually conscious, the more we are devotionally tuned to God, the more we can hear His response when we talk with Him. Often we think of a prayer being successful when whatever we have prayed for is attained.
But that is only one part of prayer. Ultimately, the purpose of prayer is to develop a relationship with God. If we go to a shopkeeper, generally we go to him to ask what we want, and when we get it, the relationship is more or less over, over there.
It doesn’t go to a deeper level than just asking for something and paying the price for it and getting it. But if we go to a friend or a mentor, and then we may ask some problem and we may get some solution, but in the process, our relationship also deepens. So, we don’t want to go to God just to get our problem solved.
We want to go to God to develop and deepen our relationship with Him. So, the real success of prayer is not just the solution to the immediate problem about which we have prayed, or the fulfillment of the urgent desire that we had wanted, but it is the deepening of the relationship with God. And when that is our actual motive for prayer, then we will realize that chanting is the ultimate prayer.
What are we doing in chanting? There are many different kinds of prayers even in the Vedic literature, but among all these different prayers, the holy names of God are considered the highest form of prayer. Because when we chant the holy names, there is no selfish motive at a material level in chanting those prayers. For example, in the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Ram, Hare Ram, Ram Ram, Hare Hare, there is no request for anything at all.
The mantra simply comprises of the names of God. Just as when we love a person, we call out the name of that person, and just by calling out the name of that person, we feel that person’s personality, we feel that person’s love, and we feel our heart warming, and our relationship with that person deepening. If that can happen with just a worldly person, who is more or less like us, in the sense of being a finite, mortal being, then how much more this is true when we chant the names of God.
So the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra is chanted in the mood of a prayer. What is that prayer? Oh my dear Lord, please let my relationship with you deepen. Please let me come closer to you.
And the way we go closer to Krishna, the way our relationship with Krishna deepens, is by our rendering Him service. Because whenever we love someone, we want to serve that person. If we love a friend, and the friend requests something of us, we will immediately do it.
In fact, we will want to do it even without his requesting. So love is always expressed through service. So chanting essentially is an expression of either our love for God, if we already have that love, or it is an expression of our aspiration for that love, if we presently don’t have that much love.
So when we pray to Krishna by chanting His holy names, we are requesting Him, My dear Lord, I want to love you, and I want to express that love for you by serving you. Please engage me in your service. And with this prayerful mood while chanting, we will realize that there is actually no difference between praying and chanting.
That chanting as a prayer helps us to become more God conscious than praying divorced from chanting. Because we have the names of God as a focal point for our concentration, and for transporting our consciousness up towards God. Without the chanting of the holy names when we pray separately, our consciousness rises up to God, or close to God, only dependent on the intensity and sincerity of our emotions.
And when those emotions are lacking, or are not sufficiently intense or sincere, our prayer often becomes an empty exercise. But the chanting of the holy names, because there is a sound vibration which is full of spiritual potency, the mantra becomes like a ladder by which our consciousness can quickly ascend and connect with God. In fact, the mantra is not just a ladder that leads to God, but the mantra itself is God.
So God himself becomes the ladder in order to make himself accessible and available to us. So whatever purposes we find are fulfilled by praying, we will find all those are much more fulfilled by chanting, and it all will happen much more easily and much more naturally. Thank you.