Prayer vs. meditation

Originally posted by knightmeister
I don't know that it matters that one believe that there is an active agent. ---ToO----------

Me thinks it definitely mattered to Jesus. His Father was defintely an active agent to him. His whole teaching is about following the will of his Father and to that end someone/ something that has a "will" is an active agent.

"I do not act on my own , take bits of him here and there but don't see any obligation to take him as he really is.

"Be still, and know that I am God"

Whether or not one believes that there is an active agent, Truth is still there for those who seek.

I think perhaps Christian meditation might be predicated on the scripture "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace who's mind is stayed on Thee". That would seem to be an effective way to "Be still and know....."

Here is why I am always so impatient on these fora: I don't see folks concentrating on a given issue but merely free associating and giving unsupported assumptions, opinions and making assertions without the least apparent thought.

The question was about the difference, if any, between prayer and meditation.

Meditation can either use prayer or not. There are different forms of meditation that have different aims.

The kind most people think of when the word meditation is used involves what Buddhists call 'Samatha,' which can be translated as 'concentration' or 'tranquility'. It is a state in which the mind is brought to rest, focused only on one item and not allowed to wander. When this is done, a deep calm pervades body and mind, a state of tranquility which must be experienced to be understood. Most systems of meditation emphasize the Samatha component. The meditator focuses his mind upon some items, such as prayer, a certain type of box, a chant, a candle flame, a religious image or whatever, and excludes all other thoughts and perceptions from his consciousness. The result is a state of rapture which lasts until the meditator ends the session of sitting. It is beautiful, delightful meaningful and alluring, but only temporary.

Buddhism addresses two major types of meditation. They are different mental skills, modes of functioning or qualities of consciousness. The second type of Buddhist meditation I will discuss is called 'Vipassana,' or 'insight', a clear awareness of exactly what is happening as it happens.

The Vipassana meditator uses his concentration as a tool by which his awareness can chip away at the wall of illusion which cuts him off from the living light of reality. In doing so, he permanently changes his brain, physically, as brain scans have shown Buddhist monks who have practiced this discipline for decades demonstrably can voluntarily control certain normally involuntary functions of their brains. They can generate certain kinds of brain waves at will that normal people have no power over. Rather like weight training ...

Vipassana meditation is a discipline, and is a gradual process of ever-increasing awareness into the inner workings of reality itself. It takes years, but one day the meditator chisels through that wall and tumbles into the presence of light. The transformation is complete. It's called liberation, and it's permanent. Liberation is the goal of all Buddhist systems of practice. But the routes to attainment of the end are quite diverse.

Now, then, someone do a little research and come up with an intelligent discussion of what prayer is and how it is different from what I've just described.

Originally posted by Scriabin
Here is why I am always so impatient on these fora: I don't see folks concentrating on a given issue but merely free associating and giving unsupported assumptions, opinions and making assertions without the least apparent thought.

The question was about the difference, if any, between prayer and meditation.

Meditation can either use prayer or not. Th ...[text shortened]... on of what prayer is and how it is different from what I've just described.

You don't see folks concentrating? This is one of the few threads I've read that has stayed remarkably on-task. A question was asked and answers given according to the experiences and world views of the readers. Most of the answers seem to show that the writer did indeed think about the question at hand before answering. The background of each writer is critical to their answer. There are some people who are sure that what they do when they're posing in positions called yoga is meditation, just as there are those who are sure that when they're reading a brief passage and question in a daily "meditation" book that they are meditating. Are you suggesting that each point of view requires something you consider proof?

Originally posted by Scriabin
Here is why I am always so impatient on these fora: I don't see folks concentrating on a given issue but merely free associating and giving unsupported assumptions, opinions and making assertions without the least apparent thought.

The question was about the difference, if any, between prayer and meditation.

Meditation can either use prayer or not. Th ...[text shortened]... iscussion of what prayer is and how it is different from what I've just described.

"Patience is the key. Patience. If you learn nothing else from meditation, you will learn patience. And that is the most valuable lesson available."

"Insight meditation evolves out of an inner longing to wake up to what is real and to gain liberating insight to the true structure of existence. The entire practice hinges upon this desire to be awake to the truth."

Originally posted by pawnhandler
You don't see folks concentrating? This is one of the few threads I've read that has stayed remarkably on-task. A question was asked and answers given according to the experiences and world views of the readers. Most of the answers seem to show that the writer did indeed think about the question at hand before answering. The background of each writer ...[text shortened]... tating. Are you suggesting that each point of view requires something you consider proof?

Of course not. And I am not necessarily impatient with this thread, but in general I have a lot of impatience to overcome. That is one strong reason I engage in the study and practice of Insight Meditation -- I've been too impatient all my life. This is a fault.

The impatence comes from anxiety. And when my anxiety collides with my appreciation of the basic absurdity of existence, I experience what is known as angst. I find the study and practice of Insight Meditation and the contemplation of Buddhist philosophy in general, in a non-religious context, most helpful.

When one who desires there to be some reason and order to existence faces the inherent contradiction between that desire and what can seem to be the utter formless, cold and indifferent chaos of reality, that contradiction gives rise to the sense that life is absurd, meaningless. Camus wrote of this in his Myth of Sisyphus and tried to make the case that it is enough that we fight back against this contradiction by living fully and that we should be happy, as Sisyphus was happy, to live an absurd existence because at least we know the truth of it. Well, that's not good enough, I've come to think.

So I study and train and try to widen my awareness without judgment. I do not hold with most of the existentialists, although I do think, as did Viktor Frankl, that individuals create the meaning and essence of their lives, as opposed to it being created for them by deities or authorities or defined for them by philosophical or theological doctrines.

When I minored in philosophy in college so many decades ago, I recall Walter Kaufmann describing existentialism as "The refusal to belong to any school of thought, the repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever, and especially of systems, and a marked dissatisfaction with traditional philosophy as superficial, academic, and remote from life"

Well, I'm still sort of in there with Walter -- but I do not thereby espouse any alternative school of thought as the truth of the whole.

I'll explain further.

I studied Being and Time by Martin Heidegger, and I was convinced by Heidegger that Western philosophy has, since Plato, misunderstood what it means for something to be, to exist.

Western thought, starting with Plato, forgot about asking about being itself. Heidegger wrote that all investigations of existence historically have looked at particular entities and their properties, or have treated existence itself as an entity, or substance, with properties. That's where our dependence on the divine may have arisen -- I see little difference between the concepts underlying what people of faith believed in Plato's time from the concepts underlying what people believe now about existence -- thousands of years of personification and dieties, their sons, etc.

Heidegger wrote that a more authentic way to look at existence would investigate "that on the basis of which beings are already understood," or that which underlies all particular entities and allows them to show up as entities in the first place.

All that we understand, from the way we speak to our notions of "common sense," is susceptible to error, Heidegger wrote, and I tend to agree. We make fundamental mistakes about the nature of existence, which is a good reason to study how to better perceive and become aware of existence.

The mistakes we make by our failure to perceive what is real and simply assume that we know what we do not, in fact, know, affects the way our existence has been explained throughout the history of Western philosophy—reality, logic, God, consciousness, presence, et cetera.

Heidegger pointed to this as affecting how we relate to modern technology.

The fact that Heidegger was a fallible human being, joined the Nazi party to preserve and further his own academic career, is I think not relevant to the substance of his work. That is, one can listen to the music of Wagner and appreciate it as music without necessarily thinking about what a purely despicable human being Richard Wagner really was. He wrote some good tunes. Heidegger as a man is no role model. But as a thinker, he had some interesting things to say.

Chief among the things Heidegger said that has affected me is his emphasis on the pervasive quality of anxiety in life. When one becomes aware of this anxiety and looks it in the face, there you have angst.

Camus cites this in his Myth of Sisyphus. So that is why Heidegger's thought is important to me -- it helps me understand that I live in a state of anxiety, I know it, try to cope with it, and for many years believed my life to be meaningless and absurd. Yet I worked hard, never gave up, and always considered, as Camus did, the answer to what Camus said, that "there is only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide." That answer was that suicide is unacceptable. Unacceptable not because of cultural tradition, religion, or practical considerations, but rather because the only way to address the absurd is to resist through living and fighting on. Or so I was convinced.

Then everything changed. My son shot himself; not a rational decision, but a reaction to his own suffering.

My own pain, grief and ill health of the last two years has taught me that I can choose my attitude and beliefs about the meaning of my life, even in the face of the most severe suffering. That is Viktor Frankl's view and, out of choice, I prefer it over almost every other point of view.

Frankl said:

* "We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

* "Nietzsche's words, 'He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.'"

* "When we are no longer able to change a situation—just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer—we are challenged to change ourselves"

* "Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him - mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp."

* "We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering."

* "It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."

* "Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary."

* "Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death." (Cf. Song of Solomon 8:6)

* "We have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."

* "A man who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible suffering now found that suffering had no limits, and that he could suffer still more, and more intensely."

* "Woe to him, when the day of his dreams finally came, found it to be so different from all that he had longed for!"

* "We were not hoping for happiness---And yet we were not prepared for unhappiness."

* "Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!"

Originally posted by ThinkOfOne
What's the difference?

Should there be?

Prayer is talking to God. Meditation is the focusing your thoughts on something(thinking in your heart).

Originally posted by ThinkOfOne
"Be still, and know that I am God"

Whether or not one believes that there is an active agent, Truth is still there for those who seek.

Who is this "one" person that you are talking about? Who are "those"? Talk about yourself. Any truth you put forward to others is only as good as the truth you can embody within your own life. Jesus taught that we should follow the will of an active agent (his father). Jesus's ministry was very active and Jesus performed miracles with the aid of an active Father God.

Jesus said HE was the truth. You talk about some abstract "truth" and that's fine. You also don't see the need for an active God and that's fine also. Maybe for you there is no classic theist God , and that's Ok.

What's not Ok is then taking the real Jesus (who is at odds with your world view) and wedging him (the fake jesus) into your philosophy. Imagine yourself walking up to Jesus and saying-- " Hey Jesus , by the way , I don't think your Father is really there or is actively involved in any of this. He's not relevant to truth really. "

Now what do you think he might have said to you?

You have a choice. You can either submit your philosophy to the truth of Jesus and what he preached or you can try and selectively fit Jesus into your philosophy. It seems to me you have chosen the latter.

If you can't subscribe to a belief in who Jesus really is and the entire range of what he taught then just be congruent and honest and reject him or say he was wrong. But don't patronise him and play the pick and mix game with him. An active Father God was a massive part of his teachings.