[treehau5]

hesychasm -- the most underrated aspect of christian spirituality, sadly expelled by most reformation and counter-reformation traditions.

A good exercise is to just sit quietly in a dark room, and completely empty your mind. Think no thoughts -- whether you believe them to be good or bad. This simple thing turns out to be so incredibly difficult, that many monks on the Holy Mountain have mastered. I myself can barely go a minute before a stress or a worry about my day or job or family comes into my head, but cool thing is you do eventually get better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesychasm

[thedaemon]

That's called meditation these days, but it's not about thinking no thoughts. It's about sorting your thoughts until there are no more worries. Everyone should be doing this.

[treehau5]

Not quite, it's so much different from meditation. What you are referring to is more of the western concept of "quietism" which is pretty synonymous with meditation. But in either case, I agree, everyone should be practicing this.

[neltnerb]

Meditation is so broad that it includes what both of you are talking about.

It certainly sounds like one of you is talking about the meditating by using your thoughts as an object (sorting thoughts obviously makes no sense once you stop identifying them as "yours"), while the other is talking about simply doing it object-free.

Both are taught by many of the same traditions, with neither being necessarily better or worse, though usually the object-free version is taught later because it's hard to do without something to focus on when you're first starting.

I personally find the prior more useful when I'm trying to process a specific problem or stressor and the latter to be more useful after I've done some preprocessing. They are often done sequentially for this reason, as well as because meditating briefly with a specific focus helps prepare you mentally for the more general focus-free meditation where you simply rest in the experience of existence. But other preparation meditations with focuses can also be used to help you mentally prepare, such as focusing on body sensations, breath, vision, sounds, etc. Thoughts are just another thing you can observe.

EDIT: I'd note that the Wikipedia article on Hesychasm describes it as asceticism and "blocking off", so in retrospect I'd describe it as a different class of meditation than those that involve resting in experience. More like visualization practice or some of the scarier death practices. But they're talking about the "advanced" version there, and such things are easy to misconstrue because the language for describing it is poor. But I'd still call it a meditation.

[treehau5]

> with neither being necessarily better or worse

sorry, I think this is where the confusion is coming from. My original expansion on the comment with heyschasm was in response to kingmanaz. If you are a Christian, the heyechastic practice is markedly better than simply meditating. I was trying to differentiate between modern renditions of what meditation looks like, with the christian ascetical discipline of heyschasm, and I concluded by saying both are beneficial in any case, to someone who is under extreme long term stress.

[summarite]

You'd love vipassana meditation.

[stefantalpalaru]

> hesychasm -- the most underrated aspect of christian spirituality, sadly expelled by most reformation and counter-reformation traditions.

Hesychasm is alive and well in the Orthodox Church. Mostly practised by monks, but well known outside monasteries.