If a famous person is dying and people pray for his longevity what is the Vedic perspective on it?

Transcript

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Sometimes if a person, a famous person is dying and many prayers are performed and specific rituals are done for the long life of a person, so how do we see this? So there are two different aspects here.
First is that there is, as I said, in prayer there is doing what we can do and another is what is the Lord’s will. So as devotees, when we pray to Krishna, it is not that we want to use prayer as a tool to make Krishna to dance according to our will. That is not a pathological thing that God is a person who likes ladders.
So when people praise him, then he gives them whatever. But that is not at all the case. Krishna, he will do whatever is good for us.
And irrespective of whether we praise him or not, he will do what is good for us. But by praising him, we go closer to him. We actually become elevated by him.
So the first thing is to recognize that whether a person is going to live or a person is going to die, that is not in our hands. And it is not that our goal in praying is to ask Krishna to do that. Yes, there is a prayer.
When Prabhupada was departing from the world, at that time he said that I am not a complete devotee. He told his disciples to pray. I have not yet completed my mission.
Our master, Prabhupada told the devotees to pray. Our master has not yet completed his mission, his service to his Guru. So Krishna, if you desire, please let him stay.
And Prabhupada said that actually Krishna answered your prayer. And Prabhupada passed through that phase of severe bad health and he recovered. Almost more radically he was acting on that.
Extraordinarily preaching. So devotee’s mood, even in praying, is surrender. That Krishna, whatever is your will, I will accept that.
So now it is at one level an expression of the piety that is present in society that when someone whom people hold in high regard then they want to pray for that person’s recovery or longevity or whatever. Now it’s not for us as devotees to necessarily have to judge anything as right or wrong. Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita in the third chapter बुद्धिभेदं जनेव ज्ञानां करते संगेनां जोशेत सर्वकर्माणि विद्ध्वानित्त समाचे जोशेत सर्वकर्माणि, that whatever people are doing that विद्ध्वानित्त समाचे, the wise person tries to dovetail them in devotional service.
So the important thing is that if people can somehow connect with God even if it is for the purpose of some person’s recovery or whatever if they pray to Krishna, if they chant Hare Krishna, if they worship Krishna that is positive. Once our devotees were in America doing Kirtan and at that time one of the presidential candidates for America was Al Gore. So there were his followers, they were chanting in chorus, Al Gore, Al Gore.
So everybody saw that and everybody was thinking, how can we wake that child? So they started saying, Nithaya God, Nithaya God. And he said, what are you chanting? So they said, actually what you are saying is the same thing in our language. You also say this.
And they all started saying, Nithaya God, Nithaya God. So we, rather than trying to judge others, we try to see whatever people are doing, we will see if we can connect with Krishna. And if we can connect with Krishna, that will bring lasting auspiciousness.
Irrespective of whether specifically that particular thing which they are praying for, whether that happens or not, we are not primarily concerned with that. This is an important point. Often we may hesitate to pray because we may think, if I pray to Krishna or something and it doesn’t happen, then maybe my faith in Krishna will go down.
Therefore I am not praying. But the point is, for us, prayer is not primarily something for getting Krishna to do something. Prayer is primarily a means for us to connect with Krishna.
So if you focus on that connection itself as the primary purpose of prayer and not the result, like whether a specific circumstance works out or doesn’t work out. Then we will be far more enriched by the prayer. Because then our connection with Krishna will not depend on what the result comes out of.
So our goal is to connect with Krishna and pray. We pursue it as a means for connecting with Krishna. And we encourage others according to their situation, their situation, to also connect with Krishna.
Through prayer in whatever way is possible for them.