Meditation

[hookedondhamma]

Welcome to the Buddhist forum, Cheeryble!!!

[Several]

I'm pretty sure that what christians call meditation is actually contemplation.

No there is a sharp distinction between meditation and contemplation.

See here for example: https://en.wikipedia...i/Lectio_divina

Yep, came across this recently. The christian version of meditation is not the same as Buddhist. It involves thinking rather than mindfulness. The distinction between that and contemplation isn't that sharp. Its like considering the worthiness of a statement then feeling good about it. Nothing wrong with that if it makes you more positive.

[Jawnie]

Agree about the semantics, meditation actually means thinking.

Here's a crucial difference between Buddhism and Christianity vis a vis "meditation":

To my mind, a competent Buddhist meditator understands what's going on when he meditates.

He has learned something about the mind.

He has a plan, and being in a carefully cultivated state of balance between focus and breadth.......always "ready to catch a ball"......he carries out that plan, and watches "himself" carrying out the plan. In this very sort of act he slowly or quickly acheives the ultimate purpose of the meditation, to decompose the self and undermine the paucity of concept. Satipatthana instruction, which the Buddha extolled above all others, does this in a carefully scripted and effective way.

But generally speaking Buddhists see the necessity of understanding the mind for what it is and what it isn't, and the role that has in seeing through the illusion of concept and of an individual self or soul.

This is notably not the case with Christianity, unless all it's teaching is taken as a metaphor which would be so far fetched as to be retogressive.

Cheeryble

Again, I respectfully disagree that meditation is the same as thinking. Contemplation is thinking ie considering and analyzing a topic (one of the 84,000 topics in Buddhism, for example, such as the Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind, etc. ). The goal is to gain wisdom and achieve the correct view of reality. Meditation is the natural state of the mind beyond concepts, thoughts, feelings and beyond a self, beyond meditation, beyond a path or idea of a path, etc. The fictional self is an integral part of contemplation whereas is not in meditation.

Edited August 13, 2012 by Jawnie

[cheeryble]

Again, I respectfully disagree that meditation is the same as thinking.

Also respectfully.....merely stating the etymology Jawnie........obviously common usage is highly varied.

Of course, of real wisdom, even as one says the words, (same as thoughts), they must be taken back as inadequate.

MEDITATION

Origin: 11751225; < L meditātiōn- (s. of meditātiō) a thinking over (see meditate, -ion); r. ME meditacioun < AF < L, as above

As a side issue I believe Contemplation is judged a high state in the levels of prayer and may approach the Buddhist position of non-view. Personally I find the abbhidhammic analysis of things that comes with Buddhism highly useful. Even if it doesn't go to the extraordinary level Sujin Boriharn Wanaket's analysis of mental states, and even if we must at some stage go beyond mere concept, I see a good working knowledge of the mind as pivotal. It keeps leading us to the conclusion that mind is a mere process happening and leading away from a reification of a person, a self, that the human mind confabulates so easily.....and so erroneously.

Cheeryble

Edited August 13, 2012 by cheeryble

[Several]

"the more I know, the more I know I don't know."