Meditation
This entry provides an introduction to the history, methodology, philosophy, science, and various types of meditation, which most traditions and practitioners view as broadening the range of transformative human possibilities and invoking exceptional huma
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Meditation Rick Repetti Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York (CUNY), Brooklyn, NY, USA Abstract
This entry provides an introduction to the history, methodology, philosophy, science, and various types of meditation, which most traditions and practitioners view as broadening the range of transformative human possibilities and invoking exceptional human experiences. “Meditation” is a multiply ambiguous term, referring to a broad range of practices and mental states, many of which share common elements, such as heightened, focused, or tranquil awareness. While meditative states can arise spontaneously (Dass, Journey of awakening: a meditator’s guidebook. Bantam Books, New York, 1978), meditative traditions teach that a practice of engaging in meditative discipline increases the likelihood of bringing about meditative states. For example, one common meditation practice, one-pointedness, consists of
training one's attention to remain focused on a singular object, such as the breath, although any focal point will do. Long-term practitioners report that this practice tends to bring about states of mental quiescence. Various forms of meditative practice have been associated with most of the world’s major religious and spiritual traditions, particularly Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism, but monotheistic religions consider prayer a form of meditation. Alongside Yoga, which involves a form of meditation, secular forms of meditation have become increasingly popular in recent years, most prominently mindfulness. Jon Kabat-Zinn popularized mindfulness by creating MBSR, mindfulness-based stress reduction, an 8-week meditation program that studies have shown to have significant results reducing stress. Mindfulness alone has become a multi-billion-dollar industry, a fact bemoaned by traditional practitioners and others, who object that the practice endorses the idea that the appropriate way to deal with external stressors, such as societal injustice, is to alter one’s internal responses, as opposed to altering external conditions. This entry examines all of these ideas in some depth.
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 V. P. Glăveanu (ed.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98390-5_101-1
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Meditation
Keywords
Mindfulness · One-pointedness · TM · MBSR · Philosophy The term “meditation” is multiply ambiguous. Prior to the recent popularity of seated, eyes-closed meditation, the term has been used traditionally in the West to refer to a kind of philosophical, literary, or otherwise intellectual reflection or treatise, either in general or on a particular topic, as in Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations or Rene Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy, respectively. Aurelius’s Meditations consists of standard journal entries, a reflective practice encouraged within Stoicism, the ancient Greco-Roman philosophical school of thought most widely known for advocating acceptance, although that view is partial and misleading. The
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