# Prayer ## 1. To whose prayer does Lord Kṛṣṇa listen? “O Kṛṣṇa! I do not want from You any happiness for myself. Whatever You want from me, I will obey without fail. Even if I have to suffer in doing Your will, that suffering will be my pleasure. You are the all-auspicious Lord, and as such Your arrangements can never be inauspicious.” If a servant of Kṛṣṇa prays to Him with such faith and feelings, the Lord will certainly accept his offering. Without these feelings and faith, the Lord does not. ## 2. How should a devotee pray? A devotee prays, “O Rādhā-Ramaṇa, enjoyer of Rādhā, please protect me. May I not bring about my own ruination by ever leaving Your service.” Those who have entered family life should pray, “O Lord! May I not become overly attached to family life. May my desire for material life be exhausted. May my attention remain always fixed on Your service. Please protect me.” ## 3. How should we call the Supreme Lord? Śrī Gaurasundara taught us that in order to chant the Lord’s holy names, we must become lower than the straw in the street. Unless we consider ourselves insignificant, we cannot call upon another for help. Only when we pray for another’s help do we consider ourselves helpless. In such a state of mind we think that without another’s help we will be unable to do anything. We will feel it impossible to do that thing alone which is meant to be done by five people. Śrī Gaurasundara has instructed us to chant the Lord’s names. We get this information from our spiritual master. To chant the Lord’s names means to take His help. But while chanting, if we consider Him our servant or expect Him to do our work, then there is no question of our living in the conception, “I am lower than the straw in the street.” An external display of humility is not necessarily genuine humility but cheating. Our call will not reach the Lord if we call Him as a master calls his servants. He is supremely independent and not under anyone’s control. Unless we transform our false ego and become sincerely humble, our prayers will not reach the supreme, independent Lord. One more point: We have to remember that while humbly chanting the Lord’s name, if we do not become tolerant, our chanting will remain imperfect. If we display our intolerance by being greedy for particular objects, then we are opposing the principle of humility. If we have complete faith that the Supreme Lord is the Absolute Truth and by chanting His names we will not experience poverty, we will have no lack of tolerance. As soon as we become greedy and try to exhibit our impatience or our own skill, we cannot call the Supreme Lord properly. We often think we are doing the Lord a favor by offering Him prayers—that we could have engaged in some other activity than chanting the Lord’s name. Such a mentality is an example of a lack of tolerance. We need someone to protect us from such a mentality, someone to help us become lower than the straw in the street. We certainly need to take shelter of a person who will deliver us from sinful motives. Śrīla Narottama Ṭhākura says, “Lord Kṛṣṇa does not reject those who worship Him under the shelter of the spiritual master. Others simply die uselessly.” ## 4. What should be the object of our prayer? The object of our constant prayer should be to beg the Lord for His causeless mercy. The final goal of every living entity is to attain kṛṣṇa-prema.