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Thursday Satsang In Person and Via Zoom – March 11, 2024

“The Privilege of Praying” with Emilio Bettaglio

7:00 – 8:30 p.m.

5:30-6:45 p.m.: Gentle Hatha Yoga with Sig Martell

7:00-7:30 p.m.: Guided Meditation with Swami Ma Radha Bharati

7:30-8:30 p.m.: “The Privilege of Praying”

with Emilio Bettaglio

8:30 p.m.: Evening Prayers

8:40 p.m.: Snacks

Join Emilio Bettaglio in a discussion regarding the privilege of praying. Bring your experiences regarding the effects and gifts of prayer in your own lives to share with the community.

Emilio will read from Y.S. 1.33 the Brahma Viharas, focusing on karuna, compassion, as a sentiment or trigger for prayer on someone’s behalf. He will read from Swami Veda’s writings on compassion.

Regarding prayer, Emilio will address the importance of mental and emotional preparation, visualization, and holding in one’s heart the specific reason for the prayer.

There will be a discussion regarding the “prayer circle” and possible alternative variations 0f it to use within one’s individual practice. And Emilio will discuss the practice of Tonglen in praying for others. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. Please bring your questions.

Read here “How to Pray for Someone“

by Swami Veda Bharati

...”The way of prayer for a meditator is a silent one. My Master, Swami Rama of the Himalayas, said: ‘Prayer is intense feeling’….”

(Courtesy of the AHYMSIN newsletter of July 2011)

..Learning to give is the right kind of prayer. May you understand that giving is a great prayer. It gives you freedom immediately, it gives you delight, it makes others happy. You are not giving to another human being; you are giving to the Lord, who is in every human being. That’s called prayer through action, prayer through karma. So your karma will never create bondage if it becomes a prayer. That’s my point, prayer will never create bondage. May you learn to give, starting with your own family, at home. The home is a great temple, where live all the gods, learning to help each other, learning to love each other, learning to be free. That family is admirable, whose head becomes an example, faced with all the diversities, yet maintaining that unity underneath….

(Om the Eternal Witness, page 103, H.H.S. Swami Rama)

…I’ve seen that prayer can solve that which cannot be solved in any other way. Prayer means closeness to the Almighty, to the absolute truth, to the source of energy, to the source of strength. When you pray whole-heartedly, your mind and heart run one-pointedly to the source. During that time you become an instrument of that power, you become a channel of that power…



(Conscious Living, page 97, H.H.S. Swami Rama)

…To whom to pray? God is the source of all energies, the center, the powerhouse of light, life, and love. Through prayer we can reach to that powerhouse and draw the energy for expanding the field of our mind and the horizon of our consciousness…

(The Essence of Spiritual Life, page 67, H.H.S. Swami Rama)