In the Western tradition there is an history that helps us to understand a common misunderstanding that forms a cultural narrative. The narrative is this: meditation is an Eastern practice largely based in either the Buddhist or Indian (Hindu) tradition that westerners weren’t aware of until the encounter between the meditative and yogic traditions of East and Southeast Asia and the West.
It is true that, in general, the term meditation probably was not as popular in modern usage in the United States to designate a religious or spiritual discipline as it has become to refer to Buddhist and yogic disciplines. This is, in part, due to the fact that despite a not insignificant population of Catholic Religious (vowed monks, nuns, friars, sisters) who nevertheless maintained these practices and traditions meditation as such was considered a more obscure topic. America was and still is a Protestant nation and in modern usage Protestant communities tended not to use the term “meditation” or “contemplation” for that matter in reference to religious practices. This doesn’t mean that Protestant communities were bereft of anything like meditation, clearly, communities like the Quakers and others expressed their devotion in a way that required the capacity to meditate and to be recollected. And any good Protestant spent considerable time reading and meditating upon the Scriptures.
Nonetheless to denote a specific spiritual or religious discipline the term meditation was, largely, a Catholic term. This is because it is based in Latin and would be more common in settings where English biblical and theological translations and interpretations came through the Latin idiom. Its usage became more frequent during the medieval to modern period. This is especially true in connection with movements and Religious Orders that viewed the interior life and contemplative prayer as integral to individual and social renewal.
But this is where some divergence creeps in, in comparison to how it is used now to denote specific Eastern focal practices. In connection with Buddhist meditation, the term meditate is most often associated with ānāpānasmṛti or mindfulness of breathing. It is also associated commonly associated with zazen, which denotes seated meditation in Chan or Zen Buddhism. Other popularized practices that Westerners are more familiar with are vipaśyanā (insight) and śamatha (or calm-abiding). Lesser known are methods common to the more analytical schools of Buddhism such as the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism where meditation is generally both discursive and visual, i.e. it involves engaging directly the analytical and imaginative powers of the mind. In truth, the term meditation doesn’t do justice to the diversity of these focal practices and the divergent aims they are meant to achieve. It also doesn’t do justice to their contextual meaning, in particular, what they are meant to achieve for the individual and why that is a good thing.
In the Western tradition, in particular the Catholic tradition, the practices above wouldn’t all necessarily be considered meditation as such but would span a range of terms from attention, recollection, reading, thinking, meditating, praying, contemplating. To illustrate this I am going to use a traditional formula to represent the Western view of meditation. I will say at the offset that in the Catholic view meditation, as traditionally understood, is not the highest spiritual discipline. Contemplation is. It’s not even the second highest: prayer, or mental prayer is. Rather, it is the stage prior to interior prayer and subsequent contemplation. See the stages of Lectio Divina below for illustration:
- Lectio – Read
- Meditatio – Meditate
- Oratio – Pray
- Contemplatio – Contemplate
Note that above reading comes first. Reading could also be substituted with hearing or listening. It could accurately be substituted with any experience of the senses. Meditation is what is done with that sensual experience, whether it is deeper truths that are read with the eyes, or a passage that is recited in ritual, meditation is how that initial sensual experience of a truth is reflected upon and entered into more deeply. In the West, meditation is now often viewed as something higher or more beneficial than prayer, but this is likely because people don’t know how to pray, and don’t realize that meditation is the foundation for prayer. Prayer moves meditation into dialogue with the Other, the Absolute Reality, or the Source and End of all that is. Contemplation is where that dialogue becomes more passive and receptive on the part of the subject, the person who is experiencing this deepening of meditation.
Above, we mentioned the now very popular practice called Mindfulness. Mindfulness is taught fundamentally as mindfulness of breathing, however, mindfulness can be applied to any experience or truth. While it may be true that we owe it to the Indian and East Asian schools to teach this practice as part of a system it has also been an integral part of Catholic meditation. And Catholics didn’t invent it. It is simply assumed that practices that involve collecting the senses, unifying the various energies of the body and mind, and becoming present is essential to meditation and prayer. But this, in and of itself, isn’t what meditation is necessarily, but rather is the ground to meditation and higher states of prayer and contemplation.
Thus, a lot of what we now refer to of as meditation denotes practices that from a Catholic perspective are preliminary to meditation as such primarily because they involve not meditation so much as such but instead applying the will to the attention and the intellect in such a way that it is no longer allowed to be dominated by its habits, impulses, and compulsions. They are focal practices and perhaps best described as keeping attention, maintaining awareness, or as is referred to in the Theresian school, practicing recollection.
Now it is true, one need not go any further than a practice like mindfulness of breathing or calm abiding to achieve some amazing and wonderful benefits. And at times it may be advised to not go any further than these stages and to really develop in these particular stages. But, it would be inaccurate to portray these practices as if they somehow exhausted the spectrum of what both meditation and contemplation are and how these are essential to human flourishing and happiness.
But, again, meditation, in the Western tradition is typically a discipline that involves the will to a greater or lesser extent and is meant to lead to a process of communion (prayer) that opens out into contemplation which is essentially receptive or passive. The disciple has done a lot of work to get to a point where the human person is recollected enough to meditate and to truly pray (i.e. commune) and at a certain point the object of communion (Ultimate Reality) and the subject of meditation, i.e. the meditator, become increasingly unified to the point that the will takes the back seat and allows that reality which is being realized to communicate its fullness into the subjective experience.
The purpose of contemplation is never to seek ecstasy as such but ecstasy is an example of the ground of the human person being so fundamentally transformed in the present moment that it surrendered to the act of that reality with which it sought to commune with. And if that reality is the summum bonum, i.e. the highest good, or infinite goodness, the reality we called the godhead then a person cannot but become infused with the goodness of that reality. This is what contemplation is.
This is how contemplation and meditation differ. Meditation is active, the will is involved, there is a lot of discipline. Contemplation ordinarily only takes place when the will can arrest its work to a certain degree because the capacity for focus or awareness is formed in such a way that it isn’t getting hijacked by the usual obsessions, thought-habits of the mind and passions of the heart. So, whereas, now it seems like in the West we think of contemplation as thinking about something and meditation as not thinking it is exactly the opposite that is true, meditation is more active than contemplation and precedes it. Can meditation alone achieve great states of stillness, equanimity, and emotional regulation? Of course, but it is helpful to remember that, especially for theists or those who are open to being in communion with the ground of all being and the source of every good, contemplation is where we aim.
Now, strictly speaking, there are two types of contemplation: natural and sacred. That will be the topic of another writing.