A universal prayer and I

Prayer generally involves two, oneself and another superior or higher self.

Then there is the aspect of for what one prays. One generally prays to get something or for the well-being of someone (which could also be oneself).

Then there are prayers at higher levels, for the well-being of every living being in the universe. One such prayer, very popular from the Sivananda Yoga classes, called a loka kalyāṇa or loka kṣema prayer [1], goes like this:

sarveṣām svastiḥ bhavatu [2]

sarveṣām shantiḥ bhavatu

sarveṣām pūrṇam bhavatu

sarveṣām mangalam bhavatu

Translated roughly as:

[May] well-being be everywhere {or ,May all be well}

[May] Peace be everywhere {or, May all be at peace}

[May] auspiciousness be everywhere {or, May things happen as expected, may everything occur naturally}

[May] fullness be everywhere {or, May all be content, may all lack nothing}

This prayer may be chanted with the idea that the outside world and everything/everybody there should become as prayed for. But, another, subtler, meaning is about one's attitude. How do I regard everything and everybody else - starting from one's immediate surroundings and one's family, to the entirety of one's species, to all living and non-living things?

By wishing positivity and a natural life (peaceful, contented, full, lacking nothing, natural changes and events) for everybody and everything else, my attitude and way of thinking changes by way of reduced biases, groupism/tribalism, envy, jealousy, and vengefulness. At least for the nonce, I have expanded my scope of tribe or group to the highest or largest conceivable possible.

Put differently, the state of my "I" has changed from immanent to transcendent. One way to gauge spiritual progress, therefore, is how easily one makes this change and how natural is one's attitude in such situations.

Notes

[1] A nice article on possible sources and variants of this prayer

[2] Pronounced normally as: sarveShaam-svastir-bhavatu. The ending 'ḥ' + beginning 'b' becomes 'rb' in Sanskrit. Much as two vowels, one ending a word and the other starting a word, are separated by an 'r' in English (law-r-and-order)