Prayer can work, if it is done like Bhakti yoga. You cannot just use your intellectual mind to speak to the face of the Beloved. Your heart must move, and it will spontaneously move on its own, and not because social expectations requires it. It comes from the an understanding that the divine and the ordinary are not so fundamentally separated [1]. That the Beloved whom one is beseeching without, also dwells within as well.
Ironically, yeah, it is best paired with mindfulness meditation. The Buddhist equivalent to bhakti is are the metta practices -- adopting the attitude of loving-kindness in thoughts, words, and deeds. Not so much different from the teaching of the Christ.
Prayer can work -- but there are many methods, and many different kinds of people.
Footnotes:
[1] Orthodox religions, including orthodox dualist Shaiva Tantra from which all the modern yogas descend from, all have this fundamental separation of the divine and the oridinary. Christianity, as popularly taught, has this view.
Prayer can work, if it is done like Bhakti yoga. You cannot just use your intellectual mind to speak to the face of the Beloved. Your heart must move, and it will spontaneously move on its own, and not because social expectations requires it. It comes from the an understanding that the divine and the ordinary are not so fundamentally separated [1]. That the Beloved whom one is beseeching without, also dwells within as well.
Ironically, yeah, it is best paired with mindfulness meditation. The Buddhist equivalent to bhakti is are the metta practices -- adopting the attitude of loving-kindness in thoughts, words, and deeds. Not so much different from the teaching of the Christ.
Prayer can work -- but there are many methods, and many different kinds of people.
Footnotes:
[1] Orthodox religions, including orthodox dualist Shaiva Tantra from which all the modern yogas descend from, all have this fundamental separation of the divine and the oridinary. Christianity, as popularly taught, has this view.