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Prayer and its Power
blocks. Many time the devotee finds himself helpless in making any advancement. He realizes that his efforts are insufficient to overcome the various forms of obstacles and worldly passions. It is at this juncture that he feels the intense need for the Divine Grace, which he prays in the form of petitions, while depicting his innermost feeling of complete dedication. Here, he expresses that none else but God alone can be his true savior. He frankly admits before God that in absence of His guide, help, merciful blessings and grace, he will lose the battle. It is here that a true devotee makes an open minded revelation of his total unilateral and unconditional surrender at the lotus feet of the Master and become free from all worries like a child in the lap of his mother. Such dedicated and emotionallysurcharged prayers are well documented by devotees of great repute all over the world. The author of this paper himself has passed through such a stage and had the occasions of the spiritual survival by the Divine Grace. Therefore, this is neither a conjecture nor a proposed theory but a hard fact of realism and experience in spiritual life.
One of the inspiring and historically recorded famous prayers Bhaktamara by Mantunga Sūri, a contemporary of Emperor Harṣavardhna reads as follows.
bhaktamara pranatamauli mani prabhānām udyotakam dalitapāpatamo vitānam.
samyaka praṇamya jinapādayugaṁ yugādāvalambanaṁ bhavajale patatāṁ Janānāṁ.
III. Confession Prayers
21
- Bhaktāmarstotra -1
-7
Jain Education International.
This type of prayers are quite popular and the devotee open-heartedly takes refuge at the lotus feet of God and with immense inner sense of repentance, narrates all the negative qualities of his personality like faults, vices, shortcomings, defects and sins. He even states, "O Lord! all sins which I may have committing knowingly or unknowingly may be forgiven. I abide my vow of not committing them again." In the real repentance with total dedication, the sins are burnt in the same way as the dry wood in the fire.
Śrimad Rajacandra, the spiritual guide of Mahatma Gandhi, states in 56 lesson of his Mokṣamālā as follows:
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