Talk:Prayer

Location of prayer

It would be interesting to have a section on location of prayer. Why do people go to a church/mosque/temple/shrine/etc. to pray instead of at home or in a meadow, etc.?

There is a small section on Prayer groups, so prayer location may follow on that. But people do go to "places of worship" to pray alone, so it is not just groups prayer. And they go to tombs of people to pray. So there are several lines of thought there. I have not researched this and I do not watch this page, but I bet there are many opinions here that may start a section. I will look back in a week or so, to see if you guys have ideas. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 00:29, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

No, I think that is pretty much covered (or else should be) in the sections about individual religions. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 14:15, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

It relates more to the concept of "sacred space" than prayer per se. Wikipedia doesn't even have an article of Sacred Space (except for a website by the name). It might be worth a mention, but there would be no need to go into detail in this particular article, I think. Carlo (talk) 14:21, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Carlo, that was a very interesting term you introduced. Yes, there is a website by that name and once I did a google search [1] lots of other items showed up. Many of them are new age related and another book by that name shows how to make your home a sacred place by various means such as energy etc. - whatever that may mean. Given that I am mostly interested in Christian concepts, do you have another term or item I can search on? I tried "sanct space" but not much there. Is there a term that one would apply to a church as being a "sacred space" or "sanct space"? Thanks. History2007 (talk) 10:57, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Spam in the external links section

At least once a week for as far back as I can tell, someone inserts an external link to a prayer request website. Feel free to edit the comment I've inserted there today about that problem. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 04:43, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Extremely POV as it stands now

Blanchard, I see you removed my fact check on the statement that "most religions involve prayer in one way or another" which as worded is a weasel statement with equivocation on the subject word "prayer" as I noted in the edit log, with advice to look for the support elsewhere in the article. I did peruse the article and its talk space and find that it is an encomium to Prayer maintained largely by you. Although this is a violation of the spirit as well as the letter of wikipedia policies, I join the many I'm sure that have preceeded me in demurring from engaging in a conflict over this with the standard (and certainly false) excuse that only the deluded are harmed. If you would like someone to write a section balancing the advert with a summary the positions of those who believe prayer is contemptible and childish superstition in order to balance the current advert for same, I or some other non-believer I'm sure will oblige. Lycurgus (talk) 14:37, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Given that the rest of the article is almost entirely devoted to elaborating on that statement, I don't see how having over 60 reference tags to support a single sentence would be constructive. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 14:56, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Your response does not seem to relate directly to the entry with which I started this thread as summarized in its title, so I inserted space in same. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 14:59, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

You want to assert that Christianity does not involve prayer? Or Islam? Or Buddhism? If you could show that to be true, then you'd have a case. As far as I can tell, Atheism is the only major religion in which prayer is not involved. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 15:11, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Well as I've tried to get across to you in the subsequent entries after the first, I've moved on from the matter of whether or not there are major religions that don't have "prayer". That would rapidly descend into what a religion is and the fact that prayer or something like it is practiced by the less learned adherents of "religions" where there is no supreme being (Confucianism, Taoism, etc.) and in societies in which the literate classes ceased to believe in gods or spirits before the time of Christ (like China) would mean little. Only degenerate forms of Buddhism have prayer, in the sense in which this article defines it, as my original edit summary noted it is wrong to conflate prayer with meditation or any kind of contemplative thought (such as even atheists may have), even your article makes clear the volition element in prayer. Also atheism is the denial of all religion, it cannot therefore be a religion though it is a belief. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 15:39, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

when it said prayer, we will do it heartily because we pray on something that we believe that our prayer will be acknowledge by God our savior. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.198.79.11 (talk) 09:47, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

The article needs SOME mention, beyond just faith healers, about prayer not actually doing anything. Someone unfamiliar with religion or prayer (I understand this is an unlikely hypothetical, but this the perspective "someone who knows nothing about x" should take in x article) who read this article would be of the impression he or she could gain significant supernatural favor by copying the methods described. --NEMT (talk) 12:56, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Actually the paragraph on the scientific study of prayer (in the intro) gives way too much weight to a recent fad. Prayer is an important part of human culture, like it or not. (As well as if anyone is listening or not.) Wolfview (talk) 14:21, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Removed the whitespace I had in starting this thread, it looked like something had been removed but I checked and it was in my original edit. FTR it was double break because I did not know of wikiML to do anything other than a line feed with a single break, guess hard line break and continuing the same indent level would work. I would define prayer as "a supplication from a believer to a purported superior or supernatural being for the achievement of some state of affairs" since that, pray you, would allow the connection to relations between two actual parties, petitions, etc.. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 09:05, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

"And preide is fader wel ȝerne"

The quote is from the etymology section. It's nice to include the earliest known use of the word pray, but what exactly does this phrase mean? If no one knows, I'd like to remove the quotation say simply "Pray entered Middle English as preyen, prayen,and preien around 1290, with the meaning to ask earnestly" and leave it at that. --Rsl12 (talk) 19:02, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

The more I look at the etymology section, the more I want to clean it up. What is the reason for going into all this detail? Particularly for foreign languages? If I hear no objection in the next few days, I'll work on cleaning it up. --Rsl12 (talk) 15:16, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I started to edit the etymology section, but the more I reviewed it, the less useful it seemed. I'm going to delete it, as per WP:NAD. --Rsl12 (talk) 19:01, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

New quote

Perhaps

“

If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. - Thomas S. Szasz

”

can be included

Vajrayana and Tibetan Buddhist sections seem to lack comprehensiveness or accuracy

The Tibetan Buddhist section needs more thoroughness, and accuracy, given the tremendous diversity of approaches within that tradition. One small point; it was not clear in the article that most of Tibetan Buddhism is a form of Vajrayana, which may or may not be given as a separate topic. There are other Vajrayana sects, and Tibetan Buddhism may have some non-Vajrayana sects (I am not sure). The range of view of prayer is generally understood to include a number of forms; supplication, connection to, synchronization with, or praise of a person or a "deity". The article says that deities are considered to exist, which is not accurate or comprehensive. It says that the advanced realization is different. Actually, in many traditions, the common understanding is that a deity is an embodiment of natural aspects of our minds or the minds of teachers as well as a personification of commitment to the disciplines. For example, one deity might represent the energy of compassion, another wrathfulness which can purify laziness and narcissism, to some extent. The article separates guru yoga from "development stage" practice, but "development stage practice" is a big component of what is defined in the article as prayer and is also a key component of guru yoga, and most other Tibetan Buddhist practices, which the article would seem to call prayer. This is a very beginning level anaylsis after a quick read. It needs a lot more work, and I will try to say more later. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.81.184.202 (talk) 15:03, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

This article is an overview of the subject and as such can only provide a brief synopsis of the role of prayer in the major Eastern and Western traditions, otherwise it would become extremely long, and off-putting to the general reader. The article therefore needs to avoid becoming bogged down in technicalities which can be better addressed in ancillary articles.

The deficiencies raised above by User:70.81.184.202 re the Buddhist section could perhaps be more appropriately met by putting in a link to a main article such as Buddhist devotion; however in its present state, that article needs a lot more work before it can be considered as a main article. At present it is mainly written from a Therevadin perspective (with some mention of the Chinese traditions), and largely consists of a series of lists. It could certainly benefit from further expansion, particularly with mention of the Tibetan traditions, which are currently a very significant omission. Cheers, Bahudhara (talk) 23:55, 20 December 2011 (UTC)