God As Creator
Through dialogue you will know God as he is manifest in nature, and through silence you will know God as he is unman fest. Through dialogue you will know God as creation, and through silence you will know God as creator.
So Buddha is also right; he is talking about the ultimate in prayer. But the ultimate is possible only if you do the immediate. The ultimate is only through the immediate. The ancient Jews had a word; that word is MARANATHA – it means “Come, Lord, come!” That is prayer. “I am ready. My heart is open for you! I am waiting. Come, Lord, come!”
A great awaiting, with all the doors open and all the windows open, for his breeze to blow through you. And his sun to come to your deepest core and fill you with light: “Come, Lord, come!”
Jews had another word; that is ‘Hosanna’ – that means “Come and deliver us! Come and deliver us from our ignorance! Come and deliver us from our finitude. Come and deliver us from our limitations, from this imprisonment that we have created around ourselves Come, and give us freedom! Command deliver – come and liberate us!”
And the name of Christ, Jesus, means one who liberates. The original is ‘Jehoshaphat’ or Jesus. It means one who has come to liberate ‘Hosanna’ and ‘Jehoshaphat’ – two words from the same Hebrew root, related to each other like question and answer, hope and fulfillment, prayer and the answer to the prayer.
If you really go into intense passion with God, it is answered. Jesus is an answer to many people’s prayers. Buddha is an answer to many people’s prayers, so is Mahavir, so is Mohammed, so is Nanak. These are the answers! Think of them as the answers to people who had prayed. When the disciple is ready, the Master appears – and in no other way. When the disciple has really prepared his heart, has opened himself up, is vulnerable, has dropped his armour, the Master immediately appears. The disciple is the question: the Master is the answer.
Prayer is the bridge between the question and the answer between the disciple and the Master, between the seeker and the sought, between the immediate and the ultimate, between the desire and the fulfillment.
Prayer is born out of our experience of love, the way we address each other. Have you not felt the difference sometimes? We use the same words, but the quality changes. When you say ‘you’ to somebody to whom you are indifferent, the word is the same, but there is no prayer in it. And when you say ‘you’ to the woman you love or the man you love, the word is the same but the quality is different. When you say ‘you’ to a woman you love, there is prayer, there is love. The word is pulsating, alive, streaming. When you say ‘you’ to somebody in the marketplace, the word is dead.
Prayer has arisen, slowly, out of the experience of love. When a person falls in love with one person, such great joy arises that, slowly, it becomes apparent to people who were intelligent enough, aware enough, that “If so much joy comes by falling in love with one person, how much joy will come if I fall in love with the whole!” Love paved the way to prayer.
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