Everybody knows that prayer is what keeps us in touch with the Ultimate, with the Source of Life. Certainly this is true in Islam as well. But did you know that there are practical benefits to offering salat five times a day as well?
When we organize our lives, it's best to have some kind of routine. We have to know when we're going to get up in the morning, how we're going to plan our day, and when we're going to go to bed. We have to have this routine to get our lives in order so that we can most effectively use our time. Muslim salat is a great way to do this.
Muslims everywhere pray five times a day according to the prescribed times of the day. The five prayers are: Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, and Isha. Fajr time is when light first glints over the horizon, and when the birds first start singing. Dhuhr is when the sun is highmost. Asr is in between Dhuhr and Maghrib, and Maghrib is when the sun has just finished setting. Isha is when all light from the sun is gone.
Since I've started praying five times a day, I've noticed a definite change in my ability to get things done. For one thing, I get up at the same time, regularly, at around 8am or 7am. After I get up, I have plenty of times to get my day in order and get some work done before Dhuhr. After Dhuhr, I usually find time to work on a primary project of mine, and then after Dhuhr usually I work on secondary projects. I can work a little bit after Isha as well.
It's nice to set your life rhythms in synchronization with the sun. This helps relieve exhaustion and gives you a broader view of your life's work. I find being in sync with the sun allows you to see life from the sun's perspective, that there's always another day, that you don't have to do things in fits and starts. You can become comfortable with the fact that the work is never really fully done. You just get up, get your work done, and move on to the next day.
One point to keep in mind is the nature of the prayer. If you are a Muslim, the best prayer of course is the salah according to Muhammad PBUH. But if you're not Muslim, you can still find benefits from praying five times a day at the prescribed times. Keep in mind, though, that prayer should be a break. You should take a break from the world and acknowledge that there are greater things than just keeping busy doing your life's work all the time. The nature of the break from the world should include some kind of contemplation—inner contemplation and spiritual contemplation. It should be maybe five to ten minutes of contemplation.
While I don't think it hurts to pray according to other traditions, I feel there is no need to resist learning to pray according to the Islamic fashion. The Islamic method of prayer is nice because it incorporates many different aspects of spirituality. You have a form of hatha yoga, where you place your body in a specific pose to reflect an inner state. You also have mantra—saying mind-protecting verses which help you contemplate. Also, you have specific, liturgic contemplations, and when your head and nose are on the ground, you get to improvise and come up with your own requests and speak from the heart.
In the Christian tradition, there's a lot of speaking from the heart, but the other aspects are lacking. There's no yoga, and no liturgy. Or maybe there's a whole lot of liturgy, but very little speaking from the heart. Or maybe it lasts too long to be practical five times per day. So it's not quite the same.
The Buddhist tradition is an interesting case to compare, and illustrates why I feel I am a Muslim-Buddhist rather than just a Muslim or just a Buddhist. I feel the Buddhist vipassana meditation technique is present during the whole salah, and indeed, according to the Islamic tradition, the instructions on how to keep your mind state focused during salat is pretty much the same as in Buddhism. In fact, vipassana is a meditation technique that can enrich any spiritual tradition or religion, and it will improve your Christian prayers as well, or even your occult practices if you get into that. Vipassana will improve pretty much everything except doing evil, because it will transform your evil acts into compassionate skillful means to combat demon-enemies. But the fact that vipassana is so generalized can be a bit of a weakness. In other words, it's nice to have ONE prayer that you do, all the time, which you know is being done by millions of other Muslims, at the same time. The spiritual connection, as well as the practical benefits, and sheer convenience, are some of the benefits of doing salat.
If you have trouble discovering what time salat is, there is a great website called IslamicFinder.org, which has prayer times on it. Additionally, it has apps which you can download to your mobile device which will keep track of prayer times in your area, and automatically adjust them as the Earth shifts on its axis. If you wish, you can even allow these apps to automatically play a call to prayer (called "athan") during prayer times.
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