[maroonblazer]

>Reading and praying (about the reading, about life) probably serve the same purposes as the meditation techniques espoused in this thread, but it is more than just body hacking.

Having been raised Catholic and now a practitioner of meditation for many years my experience is that meditation is nothing like prayer nor does prayer confer the same benefits as meditation. I've found meditation to be much more effective.

[christophilus]

I'm also Catholic, and was looking at becoming a Trappist monk a few years ago. I just wanted to mention that there are many forms of prayer, many of which are nothing like meditation.

But there is at least one form of prayer, known as contemplative prayer, which is very like meditation. It consists primarily in being in the moment, stilling your mind, quieting your heart, sitting still, and breathing deeply. It's an ancient form of prayer dating back to the desert fathers.

The purpose of it is to allow God to overtake you, to be receptive to him. Sometimes this happens, but many times, it's just you sitting in silence with God, often, not even really aware of him.

This is by far my favorite form of prayer. Unfortunately, most people never seem learn about it, and instead are taught to be chatty, repeating rote prayers, or rattling off prayer requests or whatever.

[dragonwriter]

> Having been raised Catholic and now a practitioner of meditation for many years my experience is that meditation is nothing like prayer nor does prayer confer the same benefits as meditation. I

Having been raised Catholic, and still being Catholic, having been taught various meditative practices outside the Church and seen some of those practices taught within the Church (and broader Christian community) as means of prayer (both explicitly, by name, as the meditative technique and other times simply teaching the same technique without reference to meditation), I would have to say that Christian prayer overlaps with meditation.

There are forms of prayer that are not meditative, and I have no doubt that even for similar techniques simply the presence or absence of religious loading in the intent makes a difference (in what direction differing between individuals) in practical effect for many people, but they certainly are not categorically disjoint domains.

OTOH, I don't think the suggestion upthread of reading and reflecting on the Bible as an alternative to meditation for the same purpose is a particularly good one,especially for those not already Christian. Reading and reflecting on the Bible—or the Quran, Tao Te Ching, etc., can certainly have value, even for non-Christians (-Muslims, -Taoists). But generally that will be distinct from the value derived from meditative techniques, unless the "reflection" itself uses those techniques. And even then, the use of the religious source material as the basis is more likely to be distracting than helpful in the meditative sense for those not already at least positively inclined to the religious content.

[humanrebar]

Fair enough.

I was just saying that both "Christianity" and "meditation" are pretty broad categories and I've seen overlap in both practices and effects of each.