Hi Sara, and good question!
Buddha can't answer prayers. When I mean prayer, its more like a chanting of holy songs / verses / mantras. Meditation would be more like the prayer you are thinking of... but rather than asking Buddha to answer, we meditate to find the answer within ourselves... to evaluate the sitatuion... to hopefully find an answer for ourselves.Buddhist prayer is a practice to awaken our inherent inner capacities of strength, compassion and wisdom rather than to petition external forces based on fear, idolizing, and worldly and/or heavenly gain. Buddhist prayer is a form of meditation; it is a practice of inner reconditioning. Buddhist prayer replaces the negative with the virtuous and points us to the blessings of Life.
Our worship is showing our love, respect and devotion to the Buddha's, to what they achieved and how... Prayer... reading holy scriptures and chanting holy songs,verses or mantras is how we worship....
Some people use prayer to mean their meditation... some people use prayer to mean reading from the scriptures and chanting... some people don't say that they pray, and rather they worship... puja... and meditate.
Because of the translation differences, it can get very confusing, puja means worship, which includse devotional prayer and chanting... but when people think prayer they think like preaying for answers... kind of a lost in translation thing...
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