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How does Buddhist prayer achieve real-world results when the Buddha himself is a man and not a supernatural deity?
Prioktan918
Answer 1As far as can be determined no prayer achieves any real world results. The saying "The least we can do is pray for him." is totally correct. Most Buddhists do not pray to Buddha, except in the manner of a person asking "I wonder what my grandfather would advise me to do?" when faced with a problem. There is no divine intervention, answering of prayers or similar in Buddhism.
Answer 2
In Buddhism, there is a disconnect between the religion as properly taught and as it is practiced by lay-people, especially in Southeast Asian countries. This thought-fallacy results from the gap between the "two Buddhisms".
In proper Buddhism, as explained in Answer 1, the act of prostrating before the Buddha is not an act of prayer since the Buddha is now a person ascended to Nirvana and cannot hear prayers. It is instead an internal act of contrition and evaluation of what a person should do. The Buddha statue serves as a reminder of the perfect example left by Siddhartha Gautama to his disciples: an example that Buddhists should emulate.
Folk Buddhism, however, is a historic meld of animist traditions overlaid by Buddhism. Many of these previous animist religions had various spirits and gods who controlled various aspects of a person's life. These gods could be prayed to for better luck or fortune. When Buddhism replaced these religions, the prayer towards these spirits and gods was now "incorrectly" directed toward the Buddha. This became a solidified traditional practice and remains to this day. Many lay Buddhists pray for things or better opportunities from the Buddha, even though it is contrary to proper Buddhism. Of course, as proper Buddhists note, this is illogical, but the question of how prayer works is not something that lay Buddhists think much about.
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