Prayer

I think that the purpose of prayer is drill the core concepts of religion into the mind.  All major western religions have daily prayer, and the prayer of each religion reflects the values of that religion.  By repeating the prayer daily, those values are imprinted on the mind.

We could consider developing a daily prayer for ourselves.  A good prayer should express practical values, values that should help with our practical projects including business.  I spent a few hours on this today and here is what I came up with:

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Those who reject teaching praise the wicked,
but those who heed teaching battle against them.
Bad men do not understand judgement,
but those who seek Yehovah understand everything.
Anyone who turns his ear away from hearing teaching—
even his prayer is detestable.

This is what Yehovah says:
Seek good and not bad
so that you may live,
and so Yehovah, god of war,
will be with you.
Hate bad and love good
and establish judgement in the gate.
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The first paragraph is from Proverbs 28.  Most translations badly mistranslate "torah" as "the law" which completely ruins the meaning.  The meaning of "torah" is "teaching".  The first 5 books of the Old Testament is referred to as "the teaching" of God/Moses.  But in Proverbs 28, it is just "teaching", not "the teaching".  The point is that one should learn from any sound teaching from any source.  Those who reject teaching are those who refuse to learn.  This describes all of modern culture.  We should place a high value on good teaching.  Our religion has no value without learning and understanding.

The second paragraph is from Amos 5.  Most translations fail badly here too, translating "ra" as "evil" instead of simply "bad" which is broader and covers evil which is nothing more than moral badness.  And similarly, "mishpat" is mistranslated as "justice" when it should be "judgement".  Again, "judgement" is broader and justice is just properly applied judgement to moral issues.  But judgement applies to everything, distinguishing between good and bad.  To be successful, we must establish judgement so that we can distinguish between good and bad code, and good and bad business practices.



Here are other prayers:

Christian

Our Father,
who are in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory,
of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen.
https://www.goarch.org/-/the-synekdemos-daily-prayers-for-orthodox-christians


Jewish
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/706162/jewish/Translation.htm

Islam
http://www.islamcan.com/salat/duas/index.shtml

Last week I added links to the prayers of other religions to the previous post for comparison.

My thinking now is to reduce the prayer to this:

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Seek good and not bad
so that you may live,
and so Yehovah, god of war,
will be with you.
Hate bad and love good
and establish judgement in the gate.
-------------------------------------------------------------

This is actually what I had suggested here:

http://www.mikraite.org/Amos-5-15-tp1260p1279.html

We can start small and expand the prayer as needed.

What is the point of this?  It is actually pointless if one doesn't reflect on what the text means.  This text has only 2 sentences, so let me break it down.

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Seek good and not bad
so that you may live,
and so Yehovah, god of war,
will be with you.
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If we do not actively seek good and reject bad, then Yehovah, god of war/business, will not be with us.  It isn't enough to just reject what is bad, one must consciously seek what is good in business, in programming, and in everything one does.  Without this, we will not live/survive as a group.

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Hate bad and love good
and establish judgement in the gate.
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In order to seek good, one must have judgement and this judgement must be applied to hate what is bad and to love what is good.  One must hate bad code and bad business practices.  One must learn to recognize what is good, and love that.

If one fully understands what this text means, and one says it daily as a prayer, and one thinks about this prayer in the context of one's own life, then this should have a positive effect.

Updated for my own use.

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Seek good and not bad
so that you may live,
and so Yehovah, god of armies,
will be with you as you said.
Hate badness and love goodness,
and establish judgement in the gate.
Maybe Yehovah, god of armies, will be favorable.
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Amos 5:14-15