From Egypt to Rome, Part 2

In Silence. Why We Pray
by Donald Spoto

(Page 6 of 6)

The custom of offering spontaneous prayers to nature gods in the temples of Mayan, Aztec and Incan civilizations is well attested; here as in Egypt, religious iconography included colorful representations of the sun, and the practice of mummifying dead kings was well established. Although there is no certain record of the content of spoken prayer, the existence of Central and South American temples and of a priestly class certainly implies a tradition of public worship, which in turn presupposes formulas of prayer.

The early 6th-century-b.c. Persian prophet Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, named the Supreme Being "Ahura Mazda." Surviving prayers attributed to Zoroaster seem remarkably modern in their warmth and in their ethical principles; more to the point, his prayers presume a benevolent divine will that evokes a serene dependence.

With outstretched arms, open mind and my whole heart, I greet you, Ahura Mazda, in spirit. Turn your countenance toward me, dear Lord, and make my face happy and radiant. My heart yearns for you with a yearning which is never stilled. You are my most precious possession. My joy is in you, my refuge is in you. Let me live before you and with you and in your sight, I humbly pray. . . . Everything that my eyes rest upon reveals your glory. . . . Help me to cultivate the habit of prayer, to know your will, and to conform my impulses to its demands . . . I will pray to you in silence, for you hear my prayers even in my thought.

At about the same time, the Pygmy of Gabon, in Central Africa, were developing a similar prayer of simple thanksgiving, addressed to the god Waka: "You gave me this buffalo, this honey, this wine." Their orations were as intimate as Zoroaster's. To this day, the Ovambo tribe of Africa greets the dawn with a cry of desire, and the Bantu express their social sympathies in a language of humble gratitude and religious intercession at dawn and nightfall. In these cases, there is no evidence of syncretism - no influence, for example, from the Judeo-Christian tradition, which also has an ancient practice of prayer at sunrise and sunset.

To put the matter briefly: primitive peoples had an ineradicable sense of awe, of transcendent power. Later, these feel- ings were ritualized and formalized, but originally, they seem to have been spontaneous and improvised in simple sounds like tongue-clicking, loud breathing, deep lamentation or even whistling.

North American natives still routinely withdraw into solitude to pray. The Osage, for example, seem always to have withdrawn from the community, from family and companions, for acts of morning reverence. Similar cases abound, reflecting a wide variety of impulses and motives, including expressions of awe, complaint and petition; all of these seem to have paralleled or even preceded the more developed forms of ritual and sacrifice.

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"O God, you are my Lord, my father and mother, Lord of the mountains and the valleys," prayed the Kekchi Indian. "What have I done?" asked the Khoi-Khoi, "that I am so severely punished?" The Melanesians to this day have an ancient form of supplication when they are in a storm at sea: "Save us in the deep, O dear divinity - save us from the storm and bring us to land!" The Amazalu still ask of their tribal deity, "Give us what is good and watch over us," and the Khonds of Orissa go one step farther: "We know not what is good or for what we ought to pray. You do. Give that to us."

The Watje of the Caribbean prayed daily, "O God, I know You not, but You know me. I need You!" And with remarkable tenderness (and theological sophistication), the North African Galla stood alone in the desert, facing the sky for an evening prayer: "In Your hand I pass the day, in Your hand I pass the night - You Who are my mother and my father."

Similarly, the evolution of Hindu prayer, which is not doctrinally rigid, allows multiple gods to be invoked while many people have one favorite. But recently, deeper study of Hindu texts and more respectful dialogue with Hindu sages have made it clear that Hinduism ought not to be regarded as naïvely polytheistic.

Although it is true to say there are as many approaches to Hinduism as there are Hindus, Hinduism may be regarded as essentially monotheistic: in this light, all its gods are aspects of a single universal Reality which is the only Reality; the world itself, for the Hindu, is the Unreal. In this regard, Ramakrishna, Gandhi, Tagore and Aurobindo - all of them profoundly mystical Hindus - prayed to God in terms no Jew or Christian would have to reject. At the heart of their prayer is a conviction that informs all Asian prayer and the best of Western prayer: we are one with God and we are not one with God. Real prayer does not reject the language of paradox but embraces it.

In Hindu private prayer, great stress is placed on proper sounds and chants, and the repeated mantras are credited with almost magical power. Purification of the mind and inner transformation not only realize the deepest inclinations of the self but also bring one closer to one's God.

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In China, remarkable contributions were made not to the concept or practice of prayer or matters of religion as commonly understood, but to the notion and nature of ethics. Confucius, who was probably born in 551 b.c. and died about 479 b.c., had no interest in what we call God or the gods, nor was he concerned about an afterlife. "Why do you ask me about death when you do not know how to live?" he was reputed to have asked. Orphaned and poverty-stricken, he became a self-educated public servant, urging the reform of oppressive taxes that were ruining the lives of countless Chinese.

A living embodiment of the most worthy social ideals and an advocate for just government, he was unsuccessful as a politician but brilliant as a teacher. Confucius insisted that the truly superior man is benevolent and that a moral existence lived in harmony with the universe is the highest achievement. The realization of that goal was to be found in a government that existed only for the benefit of all the people.

Eventually, the ideals of Confucius (preserved only in fragmentary documents) were absorbed into a variety of popular religions, some of which, as they evolved, made room for various kinds of deities. One especially noteworthy outgrowth of these became known as Taoism, which can be traced to the writings of the mysterious Lao-tzu, who lived sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries b.c.

In the Tao-te Ching (The Book of the Way and Its Virtue), attributed to Lao-tzu, there is mention of an infinite mystery that can be neither named nor described in human language. Lao-tzu claimed that "the Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name." He spoke of moving beyond thinking and encouraged entrance into a dark emptiness that was not nothingness but a state beyond multiplicity, and he understood that what we call the truth is nothing like an absolute.

There may be no analogue in Chinese thought for the idea of a Creator as we often use that word in the West, but a potential symbiosis should be appreciated. The Eastern intuition about the power of natural forces in the universe and the Eastern insistence on ethical responsibility are two notions consistent with the invitation extended to Adam by God, Who invites us to collaborate with Him in the management of this mysterious, created world, and to live and act in solidarity with others.

This is one of the astonishing, unique characteristics of Hebrew faith: that the world is the setting for God's continuing and effective dialogue with humanity. But how is it possible to speak of a dialogue with God?

© 2005 Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam, used by permission.

About the Author

Donald Spoto, author of The Hidden Jesus, taught theology, Christian mysticism, and biblical literature at the university level for twenty years. His other eighteen books include internationally bestselling biographies of Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, Tennessee Williams, and Ingrid Bergman.