Robin Beck

great thread Robin et al...nothing to add.

we do what we can to become "happy". if you conceptualize a god or gods sitting at the top of the world pulling levers and making the world go round, you might reason, "I ought to do things that will make Brahma happy so that he will do things that will make me happy."

in the European enlightenment, they got scientific about it - "if we can divine god's plan in the natural order, we can act in accord with his wishes and he will be happy with us and shower us with favor!"

what happens in a system where worrying about the natural order is considered dilly-dallying while a poisoned arrow sticks out of your eye?

what about a system where even brahma seeks the teaching one practices oneself? i guess brahma will say, thanks for the burnt offerings, now let's get back to realizing the unborn.

those are just some thoughts that came to me on the subject. not really making a point, i guess.

i personally don't believe in the efficacy of prayer for intercession and therefore i can't ever recommend it to anyone else. when i see it in others, i will judge - is this the last rope this person has? or are they capable of pushing on to a greater teaching? i won't come out and say, praying for intercession is a crapshoot that, if it works, works for reasons that aren't the ones you think. i'll try and turn them onto teachings on cultivation and wisdom and hope they find refuge in these instead of myths of prayer to gods or spirits or the universe or whatever.

to the extent prayer works, it works for reasons other than gods being pleased that you are doing things that please them.

on a related note, the Buddha visited Brahma and asked him about the origin of the universe. After some hemming and hawing, Brahma takes the Buddha aside and says, "you can't ask me things like that. i was the first person who showed up here and the universe was in place already. then these other beings started being born and they just assumed I made it. i tried to explain, but it was no use. more and more of them started appearing and they were all turning to me as the creator - I mean, they started to DEPEND on me as the creator. It got so far gone that if I told them I didn't create it, that the world was already here when I got here, that would open a whole can of worms, overturning their idea about reality, and might set off a panic. So I just let people keep thinking I made this thing to keep the peace."

>>> It seems more of a contortion to assert that the Buddha taught prayer for material benefits.

In his teachings specifically for householder followers, the Buddha did express a wish that they become wealthy. Of course, that would be a natural result of cultivating merits -- wholesome thoughts, emotions, andf desires.

I think we might agree that this is the real intent of devotional practices; to create merit by cultivating oneself. A lot of that is Right or Proper Effort or Exertion.

The Lotus Sutra gives the blessings as 功徳利. 功 = punya or merit. 徳 = guna or virtue. I think 利
could be back translated as artha; in the sense of skills and / or wealth.

Cultivating skill is going to vary with one's occupation. Perhaps Absorption Concentration and Mindful Concentration could be considered skills?
Ditto succeeding with the 4 right efforts; which boils down to merit cultivation.

A person with wholesome thoughts, desires, and emotions; who is mindfully alert, and who can employ the two kinds of abstract thinking {mental imaging and conceptualization} is going to have a good chance at acquiring and accumulating material wealth. Maybe more so than someone who just wishes on a star?

>>> In the Nikayas, the Buddha in a Sutta on sacrifices to the gods explains that self-cultivation is the greatest gift one can make to the gods, the one that pleases them the most.

The gods help those who help themselves.

In the Nikayas, the Buddha in a Sutta on sacrifices to the gods explains that self-cultivation is the greatest gift one can make to the gods, the one that pleases them the most. Throughout the Suttas and the later Sutras, we read how the Buddha, or Bodhisattvas, or other beings, are showered with favor by divine beings for preaching this teaching or that.
The Buddha uses the impulse among the people to worship the gods and receive divine favor into a way of getting people to enter the path.

When I was a kid, I remember watching sports games on TV and thinking, "NMRK NMRK NMRK - if the Yankees win (this was when they limped along in the 80's and early 90's), I won't miss gongyo ever again!" Essentially I was trying to swing a deal with whatever powers that be behind the Gohonzon. Offering a future sacrifice for a benefit now. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it worked only because I continuously bounced a tennis ball off the wall for the entire eighth and ninth innings without dropping it once. Nothing to do with the players on the field. Perhaps I need to start praying to St. Jude for my Buffalo Bills.

If taking up Buddhist practice in order to gain divine favor is one's motivation, wonderful. However, I don't think you can progress very far in your practice if you do not quickly transcend that consciousness. Sure, there are the benefits of a positive mind set, which I don't mean to diminish, or the development of discipline from a daily practice - but these can be achieved through any number of myths. At some point, those prayers will go unfulfilled and one will either ask why and find a deeper truth, or move on to The Secret.

For me personally, I know that Buddhists throughout Asia regularly pray for intercession of gods or even Buddhas. In Japan, there is a little bit of a distinction in that prayers seem to more often be directed toward the kami in the Shinto shrines. There is also a sort of hybrid Buddhist-Shinto shrine where Buddhist deities are prayed to for intercession as well. Its also pretty conflated, especially at the big touristic temples - anything to raise money for the upkeep of those old buildings.

In Nichiren's writings, he combines the Shrine and object of worship into a single object on the condition that prayers not be offered anywhere else. One stop shopping for intercession and enlightenment.

Maybe these are the gymnastics you are talking about, but I cannot change my mind that the prayer thing in Buddhism is something for the person who is putting forth minimal effort, but yet the teachers want to cast the net wide, keep the door open, for all people and so they work it into the tradition. Offer them a Goat Cart if they will leave the burning house, and instead give them an Ox Cart regardless of their expectation. This parable applies more to the three paths, but could be read to apply to prayer also, I think. It seems more of a contortion to assert that the Buddha taught prayer for material benefits. The integration of prayer is something more along the lines of repeat a lie 1000 times... or "Give'em what they want."

For those stuck in material conditionality, the Buddha with a wish granting jewel is a mighty leprechaun, or a genie in a bottle. For those who challenge beyond, he is the greatest teacher who ever lived.