This is a spiritual prayer. All true saints and lovers of mankind prayed for the Love of God rather than material welfare that ultimately brings nothing but miseries. Buddha, Jesus, Mirabai, Kabir, Ramakrishna and Mahatma Gandhi are a few examples.

The worldly are always asking for toys like children running to their mother only when they need food, milk or toys or when they are hurt. Yet we constantly disobey the disciplines required to free ourselves from such slavery. Greedy and lustful people are always praying to God for wealth, health, beautiful partners or name and fame; even if secured in abundance, these amenities have not brought any lasting peace or joy, but strife and misery. Everything they crave for or intensely desire is perishable even if it is obtained. If the objects of desire last, the worldly people will be the ones who will pass away. In either case, they do not bring anything but momentary happiness and plenty of miseries.

Yet they keep asking. How strange!

"Transient are the conditioned things, people or events. Try to accomplish your aim with diligence." -- Lord Buddha.

"The perishables will not exist and imperishable will not non-exist." -- Gita 2:16

We must awaken our conscious to higher joys as indicated in this prayer. True happiness or joy lies in the Eternal, which lies in the midst of all non-eternals. We should, therefore, seek the presence of the Lord in all existence instead of treating it as a mere toy. Would even a naive child be interested in toys when he is hungry for food or love? Are we not acting as children when we pass our lives in mere eating, sleeping, breeding, raising species and passing away like trees, birds or animals?

Let us therefore turn to the feet of the Lord for pure devotion free from cupidity, excessive desires, enmity, anger, hypocrisy, malice, jealousy, pride, arrogance, and above all pride of ownership of wife, husband, or children, properties, or name and fame. All of these will leave us if we don't leave first, at the time of death, which always comes sooner than we think.

Let us pray only for the Lord of Love and not for the things of the world that will vanish sooner than we think. Why not seek eternal love, peace, and joy, which are ours for the asking and free all of the time?

Let us not trade our devotion for worldly goods, bodies and pleasures. Let there be no trading. Mirabai knew this and simply prayed only for Giridhar as her husband. Amazing as it is, the whole world is trading even in religion and in spirituality which than becomes a degraded business.

We may henceforth pray only for pure devotion and request the Lord that may nothing happen as per our petty desires however good they may appear but let His will be done unconditionally. Such a life and prayer brings nothing but true happiness if only we have eyes to see and ears to hear the inner beauty and inner voice.

Let us love God and his creatures for the sake of love and not for any hidden motive of our own. This leads us to eternal freedom, joy, peace and love par excellence.

-- Swami Radhanandaji