Can prayer change our karma?
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.
I'm honored to be here with all of you. Thank you for inviting me and it's a very important interesting topic about can prayers change our karma. So this is a common question because traditionally traditionally people you know like to you know pray not not just because they want something but then the parents have asked them to pray before you go to school, pray before you go to college or work, pray.
So so we just wanted to you know get get started off with this question Prabhu on this topic. So prayer means is that something that we ask as a petition for something that we want or do we repeat something of a glorification that our parents or our acharyas have taught us. Okay thank you.
So both ways if you consider one way that prayer is for getting okay one way is for prayer as requesting the lord to do something and other is for glorifying the lord. So both are valid ways of praying. Broadly we can say that in the path of dharma there is punya and there is bhakti because there is piety and there is devotion.
So punya is where we exist at the material level of reality and there is a spiritual level of reality. Punya means we do good things at the material level so that we get good things in return happening to us whereas bhakti is meant to rise to the spiritual level of reality. So one way to understand the difference is that in punya we want god to solve whatever problems we are facing in our daily life or to fulfill the desire that are not being fulfilled by our own efforts whereas in bhakti we want to go beyond this material level of reality to god's abode for life with him.
So within punya within that understanding the primary purpose of prayer is to get god to do some things for us whereas in bhakti the primary purpose of prayer is to connect with god out of love and punya and bhakti the difference is based on how we see god. In punya we see god as the source of desirable things whereas in bhakti we see god as the supremely desirable one. So in punya we value god for what he will give us whereas in bhakti we value god for who he is.
So both as you mentioned are two ways to approach. So for the listeners of Geethavani radio so we may have mix of devotees and newcomers so some of them would want the problems to be solved or what they need in life. So what are your suggestions to them? Yes definitely naturally when we have some problems we try our best to solve them and when we can't we seek some power bigger than ourselves to help us in dealing with the problems.
So that is natural and any way we approach god that is good. The Bhagavad Gita talks in seventh chapter sixteenth verse about how different people can approach him approach Krishna with different motives. So those who are distressed and want relief from distress those who then seek wealth those who are just curious to know about spirituality or god and those who are in knowledge and the next verse Krishna says he says all of them are broad-minded all of them are good but he says the best are those who devote themselves for connecting with him.
So and also Prabhu so in this regard now can anybody's prayers be answered is there a prerequisite if somebody is asking for some problem to be solved or something that they don't have they want now are they qualified to pray to get their wishes fulfilled or is or are they not qualified or is there some qualification to pray to the lord to get what they want. So it's a good question is there a qualification required now I write on the Gita every day at my website gitadaily.com so there I try to put the Gita's message in concise terms so one point I say is that we are never we are always unqualified but we are never disqualified it is we don't have the qualification because god is all pure and we are impure so in that sense we don't have the inherent qualification but god is so merciful that he never disqualifies us so by his mercy we can always pray to him and whether we are pure or impure we can always pray to him and connect with him so so if we are not disqualified absolutely that's a wonderful point that you mentioned Prabhu so we are not disqualified but at the same time when for somebody when they worship the lord they may get their wishes fulfilled but for someone else their wishes is not fulfilled now is that because lord is merciful to one person or for to both of them so when Krishna fulfills or Krishna does not fulfill our prayers it is that he is always connected with us he is always merciful to us but sometimes we can perceive his mercy sometimes we can't so now let's consider some examples from the Mahabharata now Krishna spoke the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna and after speaking the Bhagavad Gita Krishna assures in the Gita that your enemies are killed by my plan and he also tells them by mercy all of your obstacles will be overcome so now if we look at the Kurukshetra war that happened thereafter Arjuna did overcome many many obstacles there were almost impossible to overcome odds which he had to face he overcame them but then he also had reversals where he lost some of his loved ones in the course of the war so the point is that the nature of the world is that we have unlimited desires and their limited resources so that's why everybody's every desire cannot be fulfilled but by praying to Krishna and connecting with Krishna we become satisfied irrespective of whether our desire is fulfilled or not beautiful Our desires, whether God fulfills them or not will be known to some people but he is always merciful God is always merciful to the people of the country but his efforts should never be in vain and it's interesting because when you think about it sometimes when we pray for something we're so desperate to get something and when we pray God I want this I want this but then they're so thankful many years later that Krishna did not fulfill those desires yes when we are growing up we have you know desires with you know you know some people will have for women or job or something then oh my god if I had got the job in that company the company is already shut down you know many many things it's just so we're grateful that many of our wishes and prayers did not get answered so yeah It's said that we look at the present and plan the future God looks at the future and plans the present so therefore he knows which of our desires fulfilling them is good for us and which may not be good for us in fact there is a greek saying where they say that when the gods want not the God with a capital G but God with a small g when the gods want to curse someone they fulfill their prayers yeah lovely so so this is a beautifully said brother and also so God knows the end from the beginning so he is able to see the big it's like a movie you know like we when we don't know the full movie we go through this ups and downs but God knows he's the script writer so he knows so he knows the end from the beginning I also heard that you know we can count the number of apple number of seeds in an apple but God can count the number of apples in a seed so he knows so that's that's wonderful proposal thank you very much and also you know in a way in some of the pastimes that we read in the end the lord is asking okay please ask me something and and like for Dhruva Maharaj he's giving the benediction which is also partly material yeah 36 whatever the number of years you can rule and also we read from other parts of Srimad Bhagavatam how he's giving material benediction to Sudama the garland maker and the weaver and the fruit seller etc so is so as you had already pointed out because there's always some confusion should we ask God when we want something when we are going through some trouble or God knows everything so why should we ask him to solve this problem or that problem um yeah so yes God knows our situations and he knows what is best for us so the purpose of praying is not so much to change the situation as to change the disposition so we by praying to Krishna will connect with him much better and if we connect with him that itself gives strength that itself gives relief so when sometimes we have a problem and say people go to a psychologist or people go to a counselor now it's not that the psychologist counselor necessarily going to solve the problem but just sharing the problem can unburden the heart so if the problem is troubling us a lot and we decide I'm not going to pray to God about it that's we may consider that is great devotion that I'll only pray about devotional things to God that's good but then a large part of our heart is already occupied by the problem we can't deny that and then that part of the heart will not get connected with God so what we can very well do is pray about whatever is troubling us but then not make our devotion conditional to the fulfillment of the prayer and this is the problem facing me that with my intelligence I feel this is the solution and if you have some other plan for me and please give me the strength to understand that plan and to continue serving Hello Krishna Hello Krishna, Vanakkam I have a question When people are still living in the prison, they are experiencing the karma of the prayers so how does the grace of God work? How does the karma work and how does it end? Is there a solution for the prayers that everyone is asking for? Okay, good question Thank you Mother's question is say for example some of the innocent people are in the jail with some specific examples so there is examples there so some of the innocent people are being incarcerated for wrong reason and they've been in the jail for 20 years 30 years for something that they didn't commit and how does the prayer at that point impact because they are there for 20 years 30 years so her point is and also and also it's like she also indirectly mentioning the civil war of the reason is so that also that also you know like how it would happen for them they are they are innocent people being killed and how that karma works if the prayers can help them or something like that yes America yeah generally when things happen to us there are four broad three broad factors which determine the result there is karma, daiva, kala which leads to falaf so karma plus daiva plus kala will lead to falaf so if some a farmer is sowing the seeds and plowing the land that is karma the rains coming on time in the right quantity that is daiva and then the season changing to the harvesting season is the kala so karma daiva and kala and all three come together then there is falaf or say when a couple is married and they want to have a child so they unite that is karma then conception happening that is not in their hand that is daiva then there is a period of gestation they can't have a child immediately nine months whatever and then after that there is falaf you get the child so now when now this is the normal sequence in which things happen but in different situations the falaf may be produced by one percent karma and ninety nine percent daiva or falaf may be produced by ninety nine percent karma and one percent daiva so for example say if somebody drives recklessly and at that time their car skids and they meet with a terrible accident so now it might also be raining at that time it might be that some other person comes on the other side there might be some circumstantial situation so karma broadly refers to the things that are in our control daiva refers to the things that are not in our control so karma and daiva when the falaf comes how much karma and how much daiva will contribute we can't see so that's why sometimes as i said a person may like a person might just be walking along a road and they don't they don't look they look away for one moment and then somebody else is driving carelessly and then knock down this person now if that person had been looking over there they might have pushed jumped away and saved saved themselves but they couldn't but it's not entirely their fault they're just walking on the road and somebody drove carelessly but their inattention was the was what led to the accident you could say but their attention was not the only cause so the point i'm making is that sometimes our karma may not be the primary reason for the falla that we're getting a lot of daiva might also come into the picture when you translate then i'll explain the answer So the three main things are karma, daiva and kala so the end result will be kala so sometimes 1% of karma 99% of daiva so different combination so so now when somebody is a unfairly persecuted somebody's jail or somebody's victimized then their karma might be just something minor they might have done nothing they might just made somebody angry for some small reason and then they're framed or they're blamed for something much bigger so that times we understand that the daiva is circumstantially unfavorable now what is daiva? daiva is simply the sum total of the past karma that we have done which is sometimes good and sometimes bad if we look at our own lives sometimes we work very hard and we don't get much result but sometimes we do a little work and we get so much result out of that so that means daiva can work sometimes favorably and sometimes unfavorably so so now when we are praying or doing something in this life to deal with the situation to rectify the situation if you consider karma daiva kala leads to phala so prayer itself is a good karma so prayer so when we say can prayer change our karma well prayer itself is a changed karma prayer itself is a positive karma that we are doing and this positive action that we are doing will produce a positive result but in how much time that will depend on daiva and kala that is not in our control directly so even for a person who is in a very difficult situation praying can uplift their consciousness praying can give them strength in that situation also now daiva is not exactly god's will daiva is the arrangement of material nature say it's like if a person steps down from a 10-story building from a window so that person's action is karma but then gravity will take over now gravity is basically law of nature is that god's will you can say it's ultimately god's will but it's not that god is causing that person to fall down and crash and break their bones so daiva is simply the arrangement of material nature what gravity is in this example so daiva is in a bigger sense so now god's will is beyond all this so by krishna when we pray to krishna what are we doing we are basically first doing good karma and in krishna is above daiva and kala both so god can in some ways he can alter daiva also and the kala is meant to be very great he can decrease that kala also at the same time we see in scriptures if you talk about somebody being imprisoned in the bhagavatam itself there's an example of krishna's own mother and father vasudeva and devaki they were imprisoned for several years while one after one after another their babies were killed by kamsa mercilessly so but eventually because they stayed devoted to the lord the lord delivered them so even for those who are very very close and devoted to the lord sometimes circumstance may be such that they may have to go through some difficulty but the devotion to god will eventually redeem them beautiful answers so far very clear crystal clear and this is another seminar here so we already you know made sure that the listeners are also aware that there is a fascinating seminar today at ISKCON SCARGROVE from 10 to 12 practical applications of bhagavad gita because it's not like a book that is there meant for someone else it is it is meant for each one of us and how we can benefit from this practical applications of bhagavad gita so we also mentioned you know we have enough chairs so they can sit comfortably there's wonderful prasadam after that but most importantly with with your with your wonderful knowledge how we can gain because where else can we go to get this type of knowledge we don't have much option so we are hoping that you know devotees can and newcomers can make it to this wonderful seminar they don't need to go to india to meet you we have come from india to meet them and we have this nice facility in SCARGROVE because most of the listeners are in SCARGROVE so another question so can we also with the prayers be having a result when we pray for ourself or when we pray for others is there a difference when we pray for others will it have an impact can we pray for someone else who's struggling in health or they have some genuine problems it is the same praying for ourself and praying for others is it here one is the act of praying the second is the object of praying that means the action of praying itself is beneficial because we are connecting with with the all pure supreme with god so whoever we pray for whether it is for ourselves or for others that act of praying is beneficial now the object of praying if it is we and if it is someone whom we care for someone other than ourselves now in that case if we consider our when we live in the world our karma gets intermixed although each soul comes into the world with their own karma but at the same time when two people come together in a relationship then their karma gets intermixed if one person has a karma to be very sick then the loud ones also have to take care of the sick person and then in that way basically karmas overlap so just as karmas can overlap similarly the prayers by one person for another can also act as a good karma which can have a positive effect so these are technically called as intercessionary prayers that means karma is happening but we are offering prayer as an intercession for someone else so we have in the ninth kind of the shrimad the example durvasa muni has committed an offense to ambarish maharaj and then to get relief from the sudarshan chakra that is chasing him ambarish durvasa muni goes to brahma shiva vishnu and eventually finally he comes back to ambarish maharaj and ambarish maharaj offers prayers to the sudarshan it's very beautiful sudarshan stuti is there in the bhagavatam and then by that sudarshan leaves and thus durvasa is saved from the from getting the consequence for his offense so we see that ambarish maharaj's prayer helps in it intercedes so praying for others is also helpful beautiful what a great personality instead of saying oh you did this release that dhin and you know we deserve that rather than that you know praying to save him and so that's a what so what we do in iskcon scarborough also who's you know every day after the program we chant one full round of Hare krishna mahamantra with all the 50 600 devotees who may be there and we usually chant for the health of somebody who's in the hospital you know it could be somebody who don't we don't even know it's it's somebody who's there their relatives friend but we chant so we may not even know them so at that point in time we are we are chanting we just hear about that before we chant today we are offering it to mr mr keshav who's in the hospital because of a heart surgery so how can we make it really count so we say okay we hear it and then we go about chanting is there some way that we can connect it much more we don't know this person we don't we've not seen this person is is there something that we can make it personalized to to chant and for the prayers to go on we just hear that and when we chant it will go to that temple okay generally if you are praying for someone unknown you're part of a praying circle then how can we make that prayer more effective or more personal the intensity of the prayer depends on two things the intensity of the situation and the intensity of the object of the prayer object means to whom we are praying so if we are very devoted to the lord then naturally we'll pray intensely or if we are in big trouble then we'll pray intensely the two broad situations generally when do our emotions come out you say when they are the situation is very strongly we are concerned about or we have a strong connection with the lord now we cannot have at a human level very strong connections at the emotional level with everyone we know a finite number of people so the best way we can make our prayers reach reach out to help even unknown people is to increase our devotion to the lord so if we are praying only at that time when we are praying for someone else then that is good at least we are praying at that time but if you are also doing regular sadhana if you are regularly doing practices that enhance our bhakti then that deepened bhakti will bring intensity to every prayer of ours including a prayer for anyone unknown also and thus the prayer can become more effective but at the same time you are not only praying for that person Not only for that person, what the lord says is that anytime we pray, we should not pray intensely even if it is for us or others, the impact should be positive when we pray only for ourselves, we pray with a lot of difficulty, when we pray for him we cannot just do it, so prayer intensity should be the same whether it is for us or anyone when there is a problem, we have a problem and we don't have a problem Can prayers change our karma? Another question is, we have a prayer which we have read in the scriptures and also we have Hare Krishna Mahamantra so how do we connect is this Hare Krishna Mahamantra a prayer also or they are two different things? Yes, so is Hare Krishna Mantra also a prayer? Yes, see the Hare Krishna Mantra is a prayer which is chanted with a particular mood, oh lord, oh energy of the lord, please engage me in your service please connect me with you, please remember you, please help me to remember you so now as I said in the prayer there is the act of praying and there is an object to whom we are praying, now if we understand the philosophy of bhakti properly then the chanting of the Hare Krishna Mantra is both a prayer and a fulfillment of the prayer, why it is a prayer because we are chanting the mantras in a mood of service but then it is also the fulfillment of the prayer because through the utterance of the mantra, through the act of focusing on the sound of the mantra god who is non-different from his name becomes manifest over there so and connection with god is the fulfillment of prayer so the act of the prayer and the fulfillment of the prayer both come together in the chanting of the mantras so sometimes chanting other pantras we might be able to do them with greater intensity because we know the meaning of those mantras but if we internalize the mood of chanting of this mantra also we can actually both pray and connect with the object of the prayer The Hare Krishna Mantra, when we chant it, God is there, there is no difference between God and the mantra God is there, if you chant those mantras with good intention, if you think of him as a good person then definitely God is there, he resides there in that mantra so that that's wonderful that you mentioned about how this Hare Krishna Mantra is an act an object as well it fulfills now is we've been told that you know in some of the scriptures we read and some of our questions also come sometimes it is said that when we chant the holy names of the lord even once you know somebody can get liberated even once but at the same time you know we are we are chanting x number of names of lord every day so do we so how do we correlate that is it some unique way to chant only once or when we chant again and again and again at some point we will hit that yeah okay so chanting once can purify the false sense grant as love of krishna how does what does this mean it's like saying that you just hit the tar say in an archery contest or a shooting contest just hit the bullseye once and you will get the olympic gold medal it's true but to hit the bullseye once the archers have to practice shooting thousands and thousands of times similarly our daily japa what are mantras we chant that is all a part of the practice for us to develop that devotion by which we will chant once purely and one pure chanting can transform our lives transform our hearts and grant us freedom from distress as well as love 20-25 years silver medalist and the bronze also practiced for so many years they couldn't get that thing and even the rest four five six they also practiced so it's very difficult you know it takes so much of concerted effort to get to that stage and then we are almost out of time but one other question is we know the glories of chanting the holy names of the lord and it is also said that there are so many names of the lord and you know some of the devotees like to chant om namo narayanaya so can they chant any of the mantras and are they all equally potent or is there is there some specific mantras that they need to chant are all names of god equal see first of all bhakti is not mathematical so you cannot say that this has more value than that because it's a matter of emotion and connection with god at the same time there are the important thing is to remember the lord it is not just the utterance of the name of the lord it is the remembrance of the lord and there are some names of the lord which are more personal directly connected with him so for example we may refer to the god as now these are also names but they are more functional names and personal names so in general personal names will remind us of the personality of god much more vividly than the functional names so chanting personal names because they invoke a greater remembrance that is why we can say the potency in chanting those names is greater it is not that the names themselves the vidhanakarta or just the name god that also is purifying but the remembrance of the person god may not come by that so in a way prabhu for somebody to keep chanting nicely with the mood and reverberation like a child you know crying for the mother so for them the integral part or for all of us the integral part is also knowing about the pastimes of the lord because if we just know the names if we keep chanting that will also have the benefit but so based on what you just mentioned so remembrance of the lord so how would we remember the lord if we do not know the pastimes of the lord yes so actually for there is the three primary modes of bhakti shravana kirtan and smarana so japa is a part of kirtan but the kirtan will lead to smaran when first there is shravan because if we do not really know about the glories of the lord and not just know in an abstract intellectual sense but we keep hearing regularly so that what we know is in the foreground of our mind not in the background foreground of our consciousness then when we chant the names of the lord and then the smaran the kirtan the kirtan will lead to smaran much more naturally and strongly so that is why along with the kirtan we need to do shravan also beautiful so wonderful prabhu so any any instruction that you can give to our listeners you know thousands of them are listening so on this topic of how players can change our karma so your the answer that you gave is yes players can change our karma so how do we what can they do which is from their home so what sort of suggestion that you can give them i contemplate on one quote i've just written a new book on the ramayan called wisdom from ramayan there i talk about how destiny karma work together so one thought based on that book is that greater than the world's power to hurt is god's power to heal so we cannot stop the world from hurting us but if we turn towards god his healing power is always available for us unlimited don't tell god how big your problems are tell the problem how big god is that's beautiful however big the problem that we may think you know we we read from srimad bhagavatam you know the biggest problem is you know these pillars of rain coming but that was impossible biggest problem for everybody but for krishna it was so simple where the weakest finger of the right-handed person is the pinky and he's lifting but krishna has no weakness so whatever problem that we may have uh however big the problem is for god it is nothing so we continue our pranthani number one so hopefully everybody benefited from this we will also post this video in the you know youtube in iskcon scarborough.com so on behalf of the listeners of gita vani radio station and iskcon scarborough devotees we're very very grateful for wonderful wonderful answers that you have given us prabhu. Hare krishna.