Christianity
Christian traditions have various practices which can be
identified as forms of "meditation."
Monastic traditions are the basis for many of these
practices. Practices such as the
rosary, the Adoration (focusing on the eucharist) in
Catholicism or the
hesychast tradition in
Eastern Orthodoxy, may be compared to forms of Eastern
meditation that focus on an individual object. Christian
meditation is considered a form of
prayer.
Hesychastic practice, may involve recitation of the
Jesus Prayer, thus "through the grace of God and one's own
effort, to concentrate the
nous
in the heart."[20]
Prayer as a form of meditation of the heart is described in
the
Philokalia—a practice that leads towards
Theosis which ignores the senses and results in inner
stillness.
In 1975, the
Benedictine monk,
John Main introduced a form of meditation based on
repetitive recitation of a prayer-phrase, traditionally the
Aramaic phrase "Maranatha,"
meaning "Come, Lord", as quoted at the end of both Corinthians
and Revelation.[21]
The
World Community for Christian Meditation was founded in 1991
to continue Main's work, which the Community describes as:
"teaching Christian meditation as part of the great work of our
time of restoring the contemplative dimension of Christian faith
in the life of the church."[22]
The
Old Testament book of
Joshua sets out a form of meditation based on scriptures:
"Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth;
meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do
everything written in it, then you will be prosperous and
successful" (Joshua 1:8). This is one of the reasons why bible
verse memorization is a practice among many
evangelical Christians.[23][24]
The predominant form of worship among Quakers, or the
Religious Society of Friends, has historically been communal
silent prayer or meditation which consists of focusing on the
Inner Light of Christ, listening for and awaiting the
movement of the "still, small voice within," which may or may
not result in being moved to spoken ministry.[25]
Islam
A
Muslim is obliged to
pray at least five times a day: once before dawn; at noon;
once in the afternoon; at sunset and once at night. During
prayer he or she is to focus and meditate on
God
by reciting the
Qur'an and engaging in
dhikr,
in order to reaffirm and strengthen the bond between creator and
creation. This has the effect of guiding the
soul
to
truth. Such meditation is intended to help maintain a
feeling of
spiritual
peace, in the face of whatever challenges work, social or
family life may present.
The five daily acts of peaceful prayer are to serve as a
template and inspiration for conduct during the rest of the day,
transforming it, ideally, into one single and sustained
meditation: even
sleep
is to be regarded as but another phase of that sustained
meditation.
[26]
Meditative quiescence is said to have a quality of
healing, and of enhancing, as contemporary terminology would
have it,
creativity.
[27] The prophet
Muhammad spent sustained periods in contemplation and
meditation. It was during one such period that the Prophet began
to receive the
revelations of the Qur'an.[28]
[29]
Styles, or schools, of meditation in the Muslim tradition
include etff:
- Tafakkur or
tadabbur, literally means reflection upon the
universe: this is considered to permit access to a
form of
cognitive and
emotional development that can emanate only from the
higher level, i.e. from God. The sensation of receiving
divine inspiration awakens and liberates both
heart and
intellect, permitting such inner growth that the
apparently mundane actually takes on the quality of the
infinite. Muslim teachings embrace life as a test of
one's submission to God ALONE.[30]
Submission is the literal meaning of the word
Islam.
-
Meditation in the Sufi traditions is largely based on a
spectrum of
mystical exercises, varying from one lineage to another.
Such techniques, particularly the more audacious, can be,
and often have been down the ages, a source of controversy
among scholars. One broad group of
ulema, followers of the great
Al-Ghazzali, for example, have in general been open to
such techniques and forms of
devotion, while another such group, those who concur
with the prodigious
Ibn Taymiya, reject and generally condemn such
procedures as species of
bid'ah (Arabic: بدعة) or mere innovation.
Numerous
Sufi traditions place emphasis upon a meditative procedure
similar in its cognitive aspect to one of the two principal
approaches to be found in the
Buddhist traditions: that of the
concentration technique, involving high-intensity and
sharply focused
introspection. In the
Oveyssi-Shahmaghsoudi Sufi order, for example, this is
particularly evident, where
muraqaba takes the form of
tamarkoz, the latter being a
Persian term that means concentration.
