66. An Asian guide to prayer as a spiritual technology (with Joey Liu and Daniel Lim)

I'm sitting down with two of my closest friends, and most effective pray-ers I know: Joey Liu and Danny Lim.

We're talking about how to understand prayer NOT as the performative, begging, outcome-obsessed version so many of us grew up with, but as a powerful spiritual technology. 

Listen to hear more about:

• Why the version of prayer most of us inherited might be the very thing standing between us and what we actually want
• How to pray from power instead of desperation — and why the difference changes everything
• Danny's $300K prayer story — what he asked for, what he didn't ask for, and what happened next
• What it means to pray to something that was never separate from you in the first place

So many of us are starving for a spiritual practice that feels true — not inherited guilt, not empty ritual, but something that actually moves things. This episode is an invitation back to that.

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Connect with Danny: https://dannybunny.co/
Connect with Joey: https://drjoeyliu.com/

Transcript

Simone: Welcome to Liberatory Business. I'm Simone Seol. Thank you for listening. Today we have a special episode — personally really meaningful to me — because I'm talking to two of my closest friends together: Joey Liu and Danny Lim. We're going to talk about prayer.

Here's why I want to use my podcast to talk about prayer of all things: most people I know, at least in the Western world, have a really complicated relationship with it. A lot of people have wounding from having been either raised Christian or just having existed in the Christian world, which meant that the word "prayer" meant certain churchy things they aren't really a fan of and don't want to associate with anymore.

And yet — I think there is a hunger to have a more intentional, relational relationship with the spiritual world. To live in a more prayerful way. I recently had many conversations with Joey and with Danny about the role that prayer plays in our lives. And it's huge. I realized that the three of us have something in common: we are of East Asian cultures, which allows us to understand prayer in a certain way and to use it as a powerful spiritual technology — not just to be more spiritual, but to actually get more of what we want in the world.

I thought it would be so useful to introduce a non-Christian version of prayer that maybe more people can relate with. I'm not saying you have to pray in a Taoist way if you're not from this culture — everyone can find a way to prayer that feels authentic and nourishing and effective, regardless of your relationship to spirituality. I want this episode to be that invitation, and maybe a gently proposed "how to" if you feel like, yeah, that sounds great, but where do I start?

I specifically invited Danny and Joey because I see them as extremely effective prayers. They're very good at praying. I know that both of them have had miracles come true in their lives as a result of prayer, and they both have some of the wisest, most intelligent takes on this that I've ever encountered. So here they are. Danny and Joey, welcome.

Danny: Welcome. Hello, everyone.

Joey: Hi. So happy to be here and to be talking about this topic with you all.

Introductions

Simone: Let me do the briefest of introductions for anyone who might be wondering who these people are. Joey, go first, then Danny.

Joey: I'm Joey, friend of Simone, friend of Danny. I'm based in Taiwan. I'm a coach whose work centers on decolonizing voice and invisibility, and guiding people through Sacred Story work to get more in touch with their lineages, their gifts, their unique lived experiences — so we can build and put our offerings into the world together.

Danny: Hello, hi everyone listening. I'm Dan — you can call me Danny or Danny Bunny. I was born in the year of the rabbit, 1975, which makes me 51 this year. I'm a lifelong teacher and student. I love inhaling knowledge, learning from mentors and bright minds and bright hearts. I'm a serial entrepreneur — serial spelled C-E-R-E-A-L, as in breakfast cereal, because I like to do things for the love of it. I love scratching itches and seeing where they lead.

A little context: I started as an avid, huge fan of Simone's work and podcast, and I cannot believe I'm on it right now. Dreams do come true — because I know how to pray.

Simone: That was a very modest introduction from both of you, Danny especially. He is also the most well-known and the best life coach and coach trainer in Southeast Asia, and it is just such an honor to have you both here. Okay, Joey — you texted me that you had some prepared thoughts. I want to know what they are.

Who you become when you pray

Joey: I was receiving downloads this morning while drying my hair. This connects to one of them.

I also grew up Christian, so I can juxtapose that experience. The download I received was: one of the powerful things about the prayer I've been learning and living lately — and why it's so healing compared to the prayer that was conditioned upon me when I was younger — is that it's about who you become while you're praying. So much more than the outcome. The outcome of the prayer is who you are becoming in the moments of prayerfulness.

I was really turned off by the version of prayer I saw growing up in a very fundamentalist Christian setting. The prayers felt so ostentatious, so performative. There was almost a quality of violence to it — like we were praying for God to smack down evil. And there was always this begging quality. It was always outcome-based.

Versus the type of prayer I've been guided into in my own life, which has been affirmed to me spending time in the temples here in Taiwan, around people who practice Taoist and ancestor veneration. It's the opposite of all of that. It's come as you are. Come in your flip flops, your cigarette lit. Walk into this space — as beautifully sacred as it is — and you can literally feel that you can do no wrong here.

One of my fears about coming to the temple as an adult was: oh my gosh, they're going to know, they're going to judge me. Zero judgment. Complete acceptance. Come as you are. And the space it creates for you to really become your true self — so different from having to put on a performance for external eyes and external validation.

Simone: I can already feel the tension leaving the bodies of everyone listening. Danny, get in there.

Danny: I co-sign everything Joey just shared. For me, the art of praying is: you get to draw on the canvas. You get to decide how you want to pray. You can design it any way you want. It's very open-hearted, very open-handed.

When I pray — whether it's to the universe or to Guanyin or to my mom or to my ancestors or to myself, or to the grass or to the clouds or to the rabbit, I don't care — it is basically an invitation to step into the temple or shrine. It is a container that helps you drop into a state of being. And that state requires you to activate it through the real power, which is what you bring into the shrine.

It's not about begging or outsourcing. It is always about being in collaboration with the environment — with whatever is out there. Ultimately, you are the baseline. The Bodhisattva exists in each and every one of us. It's never missing. We just have to remember it's there.

The prayers of our grandmothers

Simone: I could cry. Something I always think about is that most of our ancestors were avid prayers — in a much more intense, intentional, and habitual way than most of us are, living in the 21st century with all of our modern conveniences. My grandmother, my great-grandmothers — they rose up at the crack of dawn and the first thing they did was pray. Every single day of their lives. They organized their lives around their rituals of prayer.

And members of my family, to this day, will specifically ascribe our health and happiness and prosperity to the incredibly regular, intense prayers of our grandmothers. I don't know why it's always the grandmothers — probably grandfathers also prayed, but it's always the women. The main ingredient of their prayer was giving thanks. Expressing gratitude.

Based on what I've been told by my mom and different members of the family, the early morning prayers always began with: we give thanks for this, we give thanks for that — a whole list of everyone who's healthy, everything that's going well, as well as just the gift of existence. Thank you for allowing us to be here.

The way I'm thinking about it now is that giving thanks feels less like "oh, I appreciate that you gave me this thing" and more like an acknowledgement of the truth of our interdependence. I could not be without my ancestors. I, as a human being at the molecular level, could not exist without the land that grows the food that I eat that becomes part of my body. I cannot be without the rotation of this planet, the sun and the moon and all these natural elements without which I could not be here.

So it's not that some other entity gave me something and I have to be thankful. It's that the truth of life is interdependence. Saying thank you for this web that enables me to exist — that's what gratitude is actually about. Acknowledging our mutual dependence and mutual indebtedness. What a powerful posture to return to.

Danny: Yes. And there is definitely a lot of interdependence and inheritance in my story. I literally grew up in a house that was a temple.

When I was very young, my dad disappeared on us. I've never seen him since I was a little kid. So my mom, my brother, and I moved back to our maternal family — my grandmother and my ee, my auntie. Three very strong, resilient women brought my brother and I up. At around age six, I would wake up at about 6:00 AM with my grandma and my auntie and my mom, and they would be chanting the Lotus Sutra. That was literally my alarm clock.

They would do it again in the afternoon, and then again at night before dinner. So I was bathing and basking in prayers and chants nine times a day. My relationship with spirituality was through osmosis — before the ego or the intellect came in to hijack anything. It was just absorption. And it is not religion, but for me it's a language. It's how we start the day. It's a rhythm. It's intimacy as a family. And it's reverence for everything we have in our lives.

One practice we have: on New Year's Eve, on December 31st, no matter where we are in the world, we gather at my grandmother's place and we start chanting from 11:30 PM. We usher in the new year together, and we always give thanks — for the challenges included, the trials and tribulations, the good stuff, the hard stuff. And then we receive as a family what is to unfold in the new year. It's our love language. It's the intimacy we share.

Even before this episode, I did a little prayer with my beads. I didn't outsource any of my power. I prayed that this conversation takes us where it needs to go, that the most beautiful connections are made, and that seeds are planted in the hearts of our listeners. Very free-forming. A lot of respect and gratitude.

That's my relationship with Buddhism — not so much as a religion, but as a way of life and how I walk through my journey in this life.

Finding your way back

Joey: I want to take a moment to reflect so much love to you for sharing your story, Danny. And then I'm going to reflect love to myself, and maybe to some listeners who might feel similarly to me.

There needs to be people for whom the lineage of these practices — these worldviews, these languages — was received, as you said, by osmosis in such formative years. It's a rare and rarer story, at least in the narratives that reach dominant spaces. For you to embody the role you embody and honor all of that cellular knowing that was administered to you when you were young — that's not a small thing.

And I want to offer a word of tender love and compassion for my young self, and for anyone else whose story was disrupted by threads of colonization. Both of my parents were converted to Christianity in their twenties. That was my context. And as I'm listening to Danny's story, I can sense this ache — oh, that's what I would have had, had circumstances been different.

But I want to offer my story as a testimony of ancestors gathering me back even after a disruption. For me to leave the US and come back here, to still have people in my dad's generation — my aunties who never left the temple, never left those practices — and to have access to that wisdom now, is not a small thing.

If you feel that ache, just stay open to where your storyline is going to bring you, where your ancestors will bring you. We're having this conversation because there's a collective need to find our way back into healthier practices and paradigms. And I think all three of us really believe we don't get there without prayer. We're just sharing our stories — not as the way, but as a way that we're finding our way back.

Who or what do you pray to?

Simone: So beautiful. Can we start talking about who it is that you pray to? I want to create openings for people who want to engage more in prayer but are maybe less certain about their relationship with whatever spiritual realities are out there. Some people listening might have their own form of spirituality, some might be atheist or unsure. If someone's asking, who or what can I pray to — what would you say?

Danny: Can I go first?

Simone: Yes.

Danny: Okay. This is where I share my $300K prayer story.

Simone: I was going to ask you to share that. Perfect.

The $300K prayer story

Danny: I've always been spiritual since I was a little boy. But this was one occasion in my life where I was really, truly desperate — specifically for money.

I had a close friend who turned out to be a professional con woman. Her name was Elin, but I gave her the moniker Evil Lynn. She designed a whole entrapment scheme. My partner had sold his house in the UK to move to Singapore, and we'd bought a house that would be built in two to three years. We just had to pay a deposit, and then when it completed, we'd pay the balance. The money from the UK home sale was sitting there — not to be spent any old way, it was earmarked for the house.

This friend offered to use that capital — $300,000 — to generate even more money. She also said she could use it to secure my partner an employment pass in Singapore, since he was British and wanted to stay. That offer sounded attractive. So we passed her the $300,000. We never got it back.

We took all the evidence to the police. They read everything and said: sorry guys, there's nothing we can do. She's obviously a professional con woman. It will have to be a civil lawsuit — and based on how she designed the entrapment, chances are you won't be able to get the money back. We were royally screwed. The house was topping out at the end of the year. We'd already lost the money and we couldn't afford to lose the house too.

We appealed to her conscience — she didn't have one. We tried soft methodologies, asked friends to talk to her. She said she had no money to pay us back and wasn't paying a single cent.

This was when I had the wisdom — I think it was the universe — telling me: Dan, you need to change your approach. So I went to my partner and said, "You can continue to fight for the money back, but we should divide and conquer." He asked what I intended to do. I said: I'm going to make the $300,000 back. He said, "How? That's a lot of money." I said, "I don't know. I'm going to figure it out. You chase the money back, I'll make the money."

At that point, because I was desperate and also very spiritual, I knew I needed extra help from somewhere. People told me about the Four-Faced Buddha in Bangkok — that it was very powerful, that many people had seen prayers come true quickly. Because I was a beggar and couldn't be a chooser, I was like: okay, get me the cheapest flight to Bangkok. I'm going to kneel down and pray for a miracle.

So I went to the Erawan Shrine. The moment I knelt down, the floodgates opened and I sobbed and sobbed. I had about an hour-long conversation with the Four-Faced Buddha. There was no format — it was just conversational, like talking to a friend. I was saying: I feel so torn. I'm so afraid. I'm so anxious. My partner is depressed and he wants to kill Evil Lynn and then kill himself. It's so dramatic. We need the money.

I told the Buddha: I'm not greedy. I want not a single cent more than $300,000 — no less, because I need to save the house. We've already lost the money. I don't want to lose the house too. I just need to save the house. I don't even need money to furnish it — I can sleep on the floor.

And I didn't pray for the easy thing — like let me win the lottery, let it drop onto my lap. What I prayed for was wisdom. I prayed for a road, a path to unfold in front of me. Some illumination. I said: point me in the right direction. Give me connections. Give me an opportunity or an invitation that, when it's right for me, I will recognize it. I will feel it in my body, and I will work my ass off. I'm willing to do that. I'm not outsourcing — I'm collaborating. I'm going to put in my bit. I just need to know where to go.

I came back to Singapore and was just randomly browsing the internet — this was the early days. I came across a very plain website. Just a blog, pure text. At the top was an announcement: this guy was looking to sell it. He said it was no longer fun for him, he was bored, didn't know where to go with it. He was running some ads and making about $100 a month. Profitable — he was spending about $7 on hosting.

I felt this full-bodied vibration. Like I could see many things happening at the same time. I knew that was the thing. I didn't know how I was going to do it, but I knew this was the invitation from the universe — because I felt something. It felt sure.

So I reached out. He wanted $2,000 USD. I didn't have the money — not a lot to buy a business, but a lot for me then. I had to go to my partner and say: can I borrow $2,000? I want to buy a website. He was like, "Aren't you supposed to be making $300,000? Why are you spending $2,000?" I showed it to him. He asked, "How are you going to make money with this?"

I remember my body and my mouth uttering the words: watch me. That's it. Watch me.

So I bought the website. I inherited the funnel. I made $100, then $2,000, $4,000, $6,000, $8,000, $64,000, $120,000 — and by the end of the year, I had made $300,000.

House saved. And I had extra to buy furniture, so I didn't have to sleep on the floor.

And to answer Simone's question — which I didn't forget — I was praying to wisdom.

How to pray well

Simone: When Danny told me this story in a car, that was when I knew we had to do this episode. Because this story, by itself, is a masterclass in how to pray well and effectively.

One thing I immediately notice: even in dire, desperate, fucked-up circumstances, you didn't approach prayer from desperation. You assumed a posture of power. You were saying — I need something to happen, and I'm not begging. Equip me to collaborate toward the end result. That posture of power and resourcefulness, of knowing that you as a human being are the locus and generator of all things — that's so important.

And secondly, but relatedly — you weren't asking for the end result to be delivered to you on a silver platter. You were saying: give me the wisdom, open the roads, equip me with what I need to create it in collaboration with whatever spiritual forces are out there. If only everyone learned to pray like this — not "oh, I need more money, please give me more," but "give me the ideas, the wisdom, the strength, the work ethic." How much more empowering is that?

Joey: There's this important moment in the story where Danny says "watch me." Even the way he tells it, you can sense that something beyond him spoke those words. He channeled them.

I wonder if anyone listening might be thinking: am I supposed to find some formula? Am I supposed to copy certain words? But what I'm picking up here is that the truest forms of prayer are when the prayers are given to you — when the words come to you to say. It's not even about what you're praying for or who you're praying to. It's when you surrender and trust that you are held — that you exist in this interconnected web of goodness, resources, and flow — and that even in moments when you need to pray your most powerful prayers, the onus does not fall on you and your limited human imagination to come up with the right words. As long as you are open and you surrender, those prayers will come to you.

I have my own story that follows a similar trajectory. I was sitting in my grandparents' living room at 27. I'd spent a decade healing myself, dating casually but never really thinking that marriage and family were for me. I was devoted to my work and community — I thought that was my outlet for love.

And I'm sitting in this loud, crazy, chaotic Hakka family gathering, and something just slaps you internally. It was like: you need to learn this. As imperfect, as chaotic, as flawed as this group of 30 humans in this little humble room are — you need to learn the lessons on love that allow this. And that became my prayer. Send me the lessons on love.

Two weeks later I met my husband — through a friend swiping my Tinder. The prayer wasn't "send me a husband." It was: I receive this feeling that just got sledgehammered into my heart. Send me the lessons on love. I accept. I need to learn this.

Simone: What both of you are describing, in different ways, is a posture. It's paradoxical, actually — because on the one hand, it's a posture of power, and on the other hand, it's a posture of receptivity. I am a creator and a driver. And also I'm not doing it alone. What is there for me to hear? What is there for me to receive?

We can really go sideways when we think of those as a contradiction — am I powerful, or am I receiving? Rather than as a paradox: we're both, and.

Desire as sacred engine

Simone: I think about desire a lot — both of you agree with me on this, I know. I think desire is a very powerful thing. Desire is a sacred engine, and what I desire has spiritual power behind it. So I have a very trusting and even celebratory relationship with my own desire.

One of my favorite modes of prayer is being a little toddler child. I want this, I want that, I want this, I want that. When my kid gets in that mode in a store, I'm obviously not going to buy him everything he wants — but I love that he is this sovereign human being who wants so many things. I love that he wants candy. I love that he wants the pink shiny shoes. I just overflow with love watching him. And that's how I imagine my ancestors looking at me when I say: I want this, I want that, I want more money, I want designer clothes — no matter how unspiritual or trivial things might seem. I know that my ancestors delight in me experiencing the sensation of desire.

So I love praying that way. It's not really even about the things that I want — it's a way for me to receive the love of my ancestors. Knowing that they're just smiling at me.

And the other part is where I say: okay, I know I just said I want all these things, but I know that's not necessarily what my soul wants or where my ancestors want me to go. So — show me what you want for me. Give me the curiosity and sense of grace and sense of humor to know when I'm wrong about what I want, when what I want might not be good for me, or when what I want might be too small for me. Teach me. And at the same time, I'm not going to stop expressing "I want, I want" — because that's cute for them to see.

Danny: I love having desires. My take on desires is that they're our future self beckoning at us — where something is already a done deal and the future is saying, Dan, you already have this thing in your pocket. That's why you have the desire right now. That's why you have an itch to scratch. Because the outcome is inevitable.

But be careful about the state you're in when you pray. If you say "I want this, I want that," be careful, because that can affirm absence — it can affirm lack. We want to pray from completion, as if it's already done.

Something I learned from my mom: when you pray, you must have union. One thought, one mind. The state you're in when you're praying is what sets everything up. Are you asking from desperation and fear, or are you asking from a state of empowerment, from a place where it's already a done deal? When you can reach that state, your entire nervous system is on board. You stop hedging, you stop negotiating, and you move like it's already true. Time and space collapse, and then you just wait for reality to catch up.

So we're not asking — we're receiving something that already exists. That's why I don't pray for very specific outcomes. How do we know that our obsession with a specific outcome is the best thing for us? What if the universe is saying, no no no, Dan — you think it's good for you, but it's not? I pray for wisdom. I pray for a path.

Simone: Or when the very act of wanting takes us further away from the thing we want — like if someone's praying for more money, more abundance, more prosperity, but that desperation of wanting more makes them completely ignore the prosperity that's already in their lives. The act of wanting becomes the creation of lack.

Danny: And we have to recognize whether we actually have the capacity and the readiness to receive the goodness we're praying for. If you pray for a million dollar lottery win and you win it — are you ready? Do you have the capacity to hold that much money? The problems it might bring?

Simone: And the corollary to that is: whatever you have now is what you've been given. Are you stewarding that well? Are you giving adequate gratitude? Are you in intentional, loving relationship with your circumstances right now? Because that's how you show up from a posture of wholeness.

The texture of true prayer

Joey: I agree with everything you're both saying, and I'm also recognizing how non-linear and complex this is. Prayer is not something that can be simplified. I'm actually zooming out and seeing the three of us in this conversation thinking — how else can you even try to put language to this topic without so many nodes of representation?

What I want to offer is: the nature of how you feel when you're praying might be a more important guide than what you're saying. Because — as Simone touched on — our desires can be colored by colonial scarcity, capitalist scarcity. How do we know what to trust?

What I'm learning is: it's who you are becoming in the moments of prayerfulness that can teach you so much. The truest prayers, for me, are when I become exactly who I want to become. I'm calm. I feel powerful. Suspicions fade away. The spinning wheels fade away. I'm a great conversationalist in this prayer. I'm listening as much as I'm speaking. I'm sensing.

Those are the prayers where I see things move.

For example, my friendship with Simone is a prayer answered.

Danny: Same!

Joey: And that one was very specific — not that I was praying for Simone Seol to be my friend. What happened was Simone appeared in my life in the exact shape and form that matched the prayers I had been praying. I had been praying for companionship — for someone who would understand this path I'm walking. An Asian woman, a mom, moved back to Asia but with a Western education, an entrepreneur. We found out later that Simone grew up literally two towns over from me in the United States. It's insane, once you start really trusting that you can pray powerful prayers. She fit the exact shape and form of what I had been praying for.

And I met Simone as a student — I came into her class. I didn't know she was going to be the friend who was the answer to the prayers I'd been praying for a year. But my ancestors' guidance — this is what I mean, you have to be listening as much as you're talking — my ancestors literally stopped me from sending an email multiple times. I wanted to email Simone to see if she needed an assistant, because I was like, hey, I have all these skills, do you need someone on your team? And my ancestors were like: no, don't send that email. Don't send that email.

And then we ended up starting our relationship as friends.

Simone: It was so funny, because after that course ended I was like — I'm going to get into this girl's DMs because we need to be friends. And I never do that. One student out of 900 people, and I just DMed her like, can we be friends? But I did, because we were being delivered to each other.

Danny: It was mutual.

Simone: Yes. And the same with Danny. We met completely randomly, and within an hour of meeting for the first time, I was like: I'm on my period, I'm in pain, can I go to your house and lay down? I don't know what gave me the nerve to say that to a man I'd just met. But he said sure, and I went and took a nap on his couch, and that was the beginning of our siblinghood.

I have prayed for the three of us to get together. And here we are — this is the first occasion this is happening. Definitely not the last.

Prayer as conversation with yourself

Danny: When I've been to the Erawan Shrine many times, there's this practice where you go back to say thank you. You don't just take the goods and the spoils and go on your merry way. You have to be thankful. So I always make a trip back just to say thank you — not asking for anything else. Just pure thank you.

And when I pray, there is always this texture of conversation. I'm not praying to something bigger or higher than me — it's level. I'm talking as if I'm talking to my mom, or a stranger, or a friend. But there is absolutely no self-censorship. I'm very brutally honest. There is no hiding, no dimming myself. It's so honest. And I feel that sometimes that honesty is me confessing to myself. I'm having a relationship with the Bodhisattva in me when I'm at the shrine. I'm always fine-tuning my relationship with myself when I'm at the altar.

It's a beautiful experience of building myself, nurturing myself, and loving myself with honesty, no matter how hard it is. Because most of the time when you go and pray for something, it's because life is tough — business or finances or whatever. You're struggling. And the first step is to have radical responsibility and honesty around the situation and your part in it. Being in front of the shrine allows me to get to that state.

We are not separate from what we pray to

Simone: And you know, the question I asked earlier — who do you pray to — I think I have a clearly articulated answer now after this whole conversation. That question kind of comes from a Christian framework, because it assumes God is over there and you are here, separate from each other, up there in the sky, and you pray and it goes up and comes down. One road.

Whereas in our cosmologies, it's not one bearded dude in the sky. Everything is alive. Everything is sacred. Everything is interconnected and interdependent. As Danny said, the Bodhisattva lives inside me. If I'm praying to my ancestors, the ancestors aren't just out there separate from me — I, living in the body that my ancestors made, am their embodiment. So praying to them is like praying to me.

It sounds weird in English to say "I'm praying to myself." But if you step away from a separation cosmology and into an understanding that there is no being that is truly separate from any other being — you recognize that you are part of the divine. We are all intersecting, interweaving parts of this sacred consciousness. And prayer might just be recognizing that. Paying tribute to it. Injecting some love into it.

Danny: Prayer is remembering, right? Remembering that we are never separate from what we truly desire and what we're asking for. There is no separation.

What I love about the Four-Faced Buddha is that it has, obviously, four faces, and you pray to each one in a clockwise direction. The first face is about creation — getting your prayers answered, but also about what you're willing to create yourself, using your powers and the gifts you've inherited from your ancestors. What are you willing to get your hands dirty on while you're asking for your wishes to be granted? That's where it begins. The second face is about protection. The third is about destiny and relationships — calling in connections, good people coming your way. And the last one is fortune and career. I think about all four faces as I pray. They're like me. It's my life. It helps me straighten up my thoughts and make things crystal clear.

Joey: You said the last phase is for career and fortune. And I love that East Asian, Chinese people do not shy away from praying for money and prosperity. In a lot of Christian Western paradigms, that's greedy — meanwhile there they go, literally cheating people out of money in megachurches. But that's another story.

One of the reasons there is no profanity in desiring and praying for money and prosperity is because it's one node of this very interconnected foundation of what prayer is. You pray to the Buddha, you go back and thank the Buddha. It's relational. Even in the prayer itself, you're deepening your relationship with yourself — noticing your gifts, trusting your gifts.

One ritual that struck me this week: spring equinox, March 20th. The temples were full. It's so beautiful to watch the entire community come with offerings. In our temples, we pray to land gods — land uncles, we call them. So relational. We bring offerings to them so that they have what they need to grant the prayers of the community. We supply them so they can supply us. Such a beautiful cycle of reciprocity. That's why we can pray for prosperity — because we realize I'm just a channel. Pray for wisdom, because it's not for my ego, it's because I'm meant to create something that somebody else needs. It's going to come back.

Simone: I feel like we could talk about this for five more hours, but this episode has to end. Are there any last words you really want people to walk away with when it comes to prayer?

Danny: Prayer at its deepest is not calling to something external of you. It is reconnecting with the part of you that already knows and already exists. That's why all forms of prayer work — across all faiths. You get to decide what works for you. It's what prayer does to you that matters. Just know that you are not separate from what you're asking for.

I pray for your wellbeing. I pray for your wholeness. I pray for your abundance. And I pray most of all for world peace, and for us to have collective wisdom and abundance.

Joey: My offering as we wrap: you are already praying. You have already been praying. Whether you realized it or not. Whatever came up for you when I said that — as in, does that count as prayer? — listen to that. Or whatever comes up for you hours or days down the road: oh my gosh, is that prayer? You're already doing it. You already know. A lot of the work is just stripping away the conditioning that made us believe we don't know. But you're already praying.

Simone: I'm going to opportunistically tack on: also know that you are the answer to someone's prayer. You are the fruit of many prayers. Know that.

All right, everyone — if you want to follow and keep up with what Joey and Danny are doing in the world, I'll leave their links in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening. Talk to you next time. Bye.