The Whole Prayer — An Introduction

Why this prayer, and why twenty-two versions

This prayer is not an intellectual construction. It was born of an accidental encounter: a book, Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East by Baird T. Spalding, given to me nearly thirty years ago by someone who would later turn out to be one of the most difficult people I have ever known. A strange irony in a gift: it was nonetheless this book, and a prayer it contained, that opened in me a dimension I had until then sought elsewhere, without success.

I had not noticed this prayer on my first reading. Twenty-five years later, after a steady practice of Tibetan Vajrayāna Buddhism, I rediscovered it — and this time, it struck me at once. I simply replaced my Buddhist practices with it. I began reciting it every morning, striving to be fully present to what I was saying. Quite soon, certain turns of phrase no longer quite matched what I felt in saying them. I changed them, one at a time, over nearly a year. Out of confusion, I also tried adding what I thought, perhaps without truly feeling it, but it never survived more than a version or two.

This is how the versions presented in the site’s archives came to be: they are not drafts, but the traces of an understanding deepening over time. That is why I have put them back here. Reading these versions in sequence is to watch a path unfold, none of it planned in advance.

As I write this introduction, version 22 is the most accomplished one — yet I already know that as I keep practicing, there will be others, and strangely, I find myself looking forward to discovering them.

What this prayer is not

It is not a doctrine. It requires no prior belief, belongs to no religion, prescribes no dogma. It is secular, open to anyone — believer or not, Buddhist or atheist, seeker or simply curious about spirituality. Nor is it a fixed text. It is a living text, one that can always be modified according to one’s understanding, but above all, one’s own felt sense.

What it is

It is a practical method — not a theory to understand. It unfolds in six movements that answer one another: recognizing the bond that unites us to all that surrounds, exceeds, and constitutes us; glimpsing what this “whole” is by discerning what it is not; learning to unite with it, day after day, through practice and the vigilance of the mind; understanding how your desire shapes your experience of the whole and interacts with it, how a desire held with truth comes to pass; formulating the truest desire you can; and finally, receiving what comes to pass with gratitude.

I have recited it every morning for nearly a year now. What I draw from it does not easily translate into words — it is less a new understanding than a growing sense of rightness, of calm, of union with something I cannot, in truth, be separate from, yet which still escapes my full attention. The more I practice this prayer, the more, to my own surprise, I discover its potential; each morning, new nuances I had missed before. And I can already attest to a real effect: less inner restlessness, more presence, and a quieter confidence in what life brings me.

How to use it

Here’s one way to start: You can read it carefully, once, to see if it resonates. If it does, I encourage you to read it often, quietly, since it is repetition that opens the door — first to understanding, then to feeling. I learned it by heart quite quickly, so I could be free to recite it every morning, with my eyes closed, sitting comfortably on a chair, back straight, hands resting on my knees, attentive, settled, in union.