Is it ok to ask for a specific wish like our family’s well being in our prayers?

From: Meenal Manikantan

Is it ok to ask for a specific wish in our prayers, like good conduct of your wards, good health and devotional inclination of your family?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so thank you very much question from Meenal Manikantan Mataji is it ok to ask for a specific wish in our prayers like good conduct of your wards, good health and devotional inclination of your family answer definitely so whatever is favorable for our devotional service that we can and should do so we want to offer our heart to Krishna but at the same time there are many other things right now in our heart and those are our important concerns and if those things in our heart are not anti devotional like say if there is a lust greed those have to be purged out of the heart that becomes removed by the gradual practice of devotional service and we also have to consciously strive to get rid of them but there are other concerns which can and should be spiritualized our own health our family members our wards they are the ways through which we serve Krishna we use our body in Krishna’s service and our family members are also ultimately souls, parts of Krishna and praying for their well being is actually in a sense prayer for us, our own service, so we go close to Krishna not only, not just by doing those activities that take our heart close to Krishna like chanting hearing about Krishna, worshipping the deity but also taking our heart’s concerns close to Krishna so eventually our heart’s concerns will become directly entirely spiritual and we will love our family members not just because they are my family members but because they are Krishna’s parts but even when we are not at that stage even presently when we practice devotional service at the sadhaka stage we should do both, we directly do the activities that take our heart closer to Krishna and we also take our heart’s concerns closer to Krishna and thereby our whole heart also moves closer to Krishna but if we do only the second and not the first that means we only pray for the things that are a concern to us but we don’t do sadhana bhakti then we stay at the level of sakam bhakti, at the level of material devotion and that is also good Krishna appreciates such people as udaraha as large hearted but then he glorifies those who are approaching him with knowledge for higher understanding and realization so whatever way we can take our heart to Krishna that is good but we make sure that we give adequate time to our sadhana bhakti and our connection with Krishna is not just based on our familial or other concerns but it is also having a healthy component of sadhana bhakti where we want to make Krishna’s concerns our concerns and we want to make our heart purely devoted to Krishna Thank you