Prayer

The burden of family life increased day by day, and under its weight I felt my personal progress in life forcibly come to a halt. Old age came and beleaguered me on all sides, making my mind incessantly disturbed… Now please hear me, O Lord! I am utterly helpless. Bhaktivinoda says, “Without Your mercy, everything is lost. Please give me the shelter of Your lotus feet.

O mind, please heed this confidential topic! It is amazing that you bathe in deceit, forgetting that it is donkey urine, believing that it is actually purifying you. Whether you reside in the forest or the house, keep this ass far away, whose urine burns both you and me.

O my heart, you are a great mischief-maker. You do not like the honest devotees. You like to stay with scoundrels. You think imposters are saints. The imposters make you dance. Look, the people in whom you have so much faith and before whose feet you fall are very cruel.

The Bhāgavata does not allow its followers to ask anything from God except eternal love for Him.

This human life is rare, and we should not waste it even for a single day.

The conditioned soul thinks that all the things related to the false conceptions of “I” and “mine” are his exclusive treasures. Calling them his own, his mind is firmly convinced of this gross delusion. Due to such vanity, I also fell into this material world. Floundering in the ocean of mundane existence like a drowning man, I suffer the pangs of rising and sinking in that ocean.

As a result of my offences, my heart has become just like a thunderbolt, and feels no transformation while chanting Your Name. O Hari! Now in absolute hopelessness, I sing Your name aloud, and in great distress I call out to You again and again.

Those individuals who express gratitude in their prayers are actually self-motivated, if such words are said in prayer – “Bhagavān! You have shown me infinite mercy. You have nourished me from my infancy with milk from my mother’s breast. You have arranged all the means for my welfare and those of others. You have provided many kinds of benefits in this world, and You are providing eternal happiness for me. You are infinite knowledge, the embodiment of truth, and all-powerful. In this way it can be understood that if You didn’t do all this, and if Your powers were not so extensive, then You would not be worthy of my worship!

How obnoxious is this type of prayer!