The Encyclopedia of World Religions

prayer S 347

In T HERAVADA B UDDHISM , prajna, along with morality and MEDITATION , defines the path to libera tion. In this context prajna means being persuaded that Buddhist teachings about the world, about the predicament of sentient or conscious beings, and about the means of release are true. In M AHAYANA B UDDHISM prajna is one of the most important of the “perfections” that practi tioners nurture. In general Mahayana emphasizes both compassion and wisdom as cardinal virtues. But in some schools, such as the school of Nagar juna, prajna becomes supreme. For Mahayana Buddhism, prajna is intuitive insight into the nature of all things. So important was this perfection that it became personified as Prajnaparamita, “the perfection of wisdom,” and was said to be the mother of the Buddhas. Some of the most important Mahayana texts are the Pra jnaparamita Sutras, such as the Heart Sutra and Diamond Sutra. prana A Sanskrit word meaning “breath.” The term has profound religious significance in H INDUISM . In the U PANISHADS , prana stands for the vital energy. In this it resembles pneuma and spiritus, the Latin and Greek words for “breath” or “spirit.” Occasionally the Upanishads even identify prana with BRAHMAN , reality itself. Hindus have generally taken a different view of prana. They have taught that the vital breath circulates through the body and enlivens it. As a result, psychophysical disciplines have given much attention to breathing. For example, breath control ( pranayama ) is the fourth stage of the royal YOGA systematized by Patanjali in the Yoga-sutras. prayer Communication with a religious being, such as a god, spirit, ancestor, or SAINT . Religion involves many forms of communication. Some times religious people are convinced that a reli gious being has communicated with them; this is revelation. Often religious people instruct and exhort; this is teaching or PREACHING . People may express religious desires. If such desires are not

Polytheism has very ancient roots. In primal tribal societies, one can find belief in various spir its—ancestors, spirits of places like mountains and woods, of animals—as well as usually a ruling high god. Generally each tribe, and later each city, would have its guardian or patronal god too. But it was in the ancient empires like Egypt and Babylon that polytheism really grew. As many tribes and cities were combined into larger empires, all their local gods might become parts of a vaster pan theon of gods. At the same time, as human life became more complex, gods of specialized occu pations came to be honored by their followers. Sometimes a heavenly bureaucracy paralleled that of the empires of Earth. It was against this greater and greater complexity of polytheism that mono theism finally rebelled. But wherever found, in remaining tribal soci eties, in the archaic world, in Japan or elsewhere, polytheism is important because it communicates a different VISION of the sacred than monotheism. As the theologian Paul Tillich once put it, polythe ism is a matter of quality as well as quantity. It is not just that the polytheist has many gods while the monotheist has one; it is that this makes the whole experience of God different. For the mono theist, the whole universe is unified under one rule and one will. For the polytheist, it is divided up, pluralistic, nuanced: There is a separate god for this sacred tree and that sacred waterfall, for love and for war, and each can be sovereign in his or her own time, but all are also finite and none can rule the whole show. Decisions in a polytheistic universe must be made by divine consensus, not fiat. A few people today, in Neo-Pagan movements, are attempting to recover something of the spirit of polytheism.

pope See PAPACY , THE .

prajna A Sanskrit word for “wisdom.” In H INDU ISM prajna is occasionally linked to the GODDESS of learning, S ARASWATI . But prajna is most often asso ciated with B UDDHISM .