Prayer

1. Prayer is a state of simplicity. It is NOT of words but of silence.
2. What goes on in the name of prayer is not prayer; it is desire disguised. You go to the temple or to the church and you pray to God; your God is part of your imagination. Your God is not true God; it is a Christian God, it is a Hindu God, it is a Mohammedan God. And how can God be Christian, Hindu or Mohammedan? It is a God that you have created, or your priests on behalf of you. It is a toy, it is not true.
3. Bowing down before a statue made by man, manufactured by man — and you think you are in prayer? You are simply being stupid, you are simply showing utter ignorance. This statue has been purchased in the marketplace, and God is not a commodity and God cannot be made. It is God who has made us — how can we make God? But we are worshipping, praying to man-made Gods.
4. Remember, if you pray to ask for something, it is not prayer. When you pray to thank him for something, only then is it prayer. Prayer is always a thanksgiving. If you ask for something then the prayer is still corrupted by desire. Then it is not prayer yet — it is still poisoned by dreaming. Real prayer happens only when you have attained to yourself, when you have known what God has given to you already without your asking for it. When you realise what you have been given, what infinite sources have been given to you, a prayer arises You would like to say to God, ‘Thank you.’ There is nothing else in it but a pure thank you.
5. Whatsoever you do with happiness is a prayer: your work becomes worship; your very breathing has an intense splendor to it, a grace. Not that you constantly repeat the name of God — only foolish people do that — because God has no name, and by repeating some assumed name you simply dull your own mind. By repeating His name you are not going to go anywhere. A happy man simply comes to see God is everywhere. You need happy eyes to see Him.
6. Laughter is prayer. If you can laugh you have learnt how to pray. Don’t be serious; a serious person can never be religious. Only a person who can laugh, not only at others but at himself also, can be religious. A person who can laugh absolutely, who sees the whole ridiculousness and the whole game of life, becomes enlightened in that laughter.