Mindfulness, Meditation and Prayer

For some years people have noted that various spiritual practices, such as prayer and meditation, can have positive benefits in one’s life. One quotation says,

Researchers found that people who prayed for others were less vulnerable to the negative physical health effects associated with financial stress. Also, it was the focus on others that seemed to be contributing to the stress-buffering effects of prayer. Praying for material gain did not counter the effects of stress. So thinking about the welfare of others may be a crucial component of receiving personal benefits from prayer.

Recently a practice known as “mindfulness” has bubbled into the public consciousness; figures as diverse as Eckhart Tolle and Sam Harris have argued for its benefits. There is even a program called MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) that claims many medical benefits, including alleviation of pain. However, mindfulness is not new. A friend of mine from my college days, who was briefly involved with eastern religion, used to say, “Be Here Now,” which was a slogan that seemed to encourage mindfulness.

One thing I noticed while researching the topic of mindfulness is that it is not always easy to figure out exactly what it is. On the one hand, Eckhart Tolle’s teaching seemed to involve suppressing the constant flow of thought and emptying and quieting the mind. On the other hand, Sam Harris defines mindfulness as follows:

Mindfulness is simply a state of clear, nonjudgmental, and nondiscursive attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant.

So I suspect that either the term is still in flux or my understanding is incomplete. But for the sake of this blog post that is not important.

Sam Harris notes that mindfulness is a form of meditation. He says,

… I generally recommend a method called vipassana in which one cultivates a form of attention widely known as “mindfulness.”

So we see that mindfulness, whatever it is, is a state brought on by the practice of one form of meditation or another.

Here we come to an intersection with Christian spirituality. Many Christians affirm the value of meditation as a spiritual practice. But, as with mindfulness, definitions are important.

In the Bible, the word “meditation” is used to translate a couple different Hebrew words. The most common word means “to mutter”. Meditation in the Bible is to take the word of God and repeat it thoughtfully to oneself, filling one’s mind with the content of God’s law (Psalm 1:2). This is different from most other forms of spiritual practice known as meditation, which aim not at filling but emptying the mind.

Here I will note that Sam Harris and Eckhart Tolle have something in common: they both view the self as a kind of illusion. Sam Harris says,

While most of us go through life feeling that we are the thinker of our thoughts and the experiencer of our experience, from the perspective of science we know that this is a distorted view. There is no discrete self or ego lurking like a minotaur in the labyrinth of the brain. There is no region of cortex or pathway of neural processing that occupies a privileged position with respect to our personhood. There is no unchanging “center of narrative gravity” (to use Daniel Dennett’s phrase). In subjective terms, however, there seems to be one — to most of us, most of the time.

I am not quite certain (one might wonder with all the uncertainty in this post why I am writing it!) what the perspective of science he refers to is, or why it can speak authoritatively to deny something all of us experience. Be that as it may.

I speculate that the fundamental distinction between Christian spirituality and many other forms of spirituality is that it does not deny the reality of the self. For the Christian the self is something to be denied, even to be given up. But it is not an illusion and it is not destroyed. We are told numerous times that we lose ourselves in order to save them to eternal life. Revelation indicates in several ways the uniqueness of the individual in eternity. The self remains — but it is the redeemed, restored self.

I believe that this distinction of self as a solid, even eternal, reality and self as an illusion that must be penetrated explains the distinction in spiritual practice. The intent of meditation in the Bible is not to penetrate the illusion of self but to connect oneself with God.

However, examination of the occurrence of the term meditation (and the Hebrew and Greek equivalents) shows that Christians are not taught to meditate in the New Testament. Rather, we are taught to pray.

Christians are indeed encouraged to take control of their thoughts. Philippians 4:8 gives a striking example of this:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

I like to call this “Christian mental hygiene. But note that we are not told to empty our thoughts or even simply experience them in a non-judgmental way. Rather, we are told to fill our thoughts with good things.

Certainly being conscious of our thoughts is important. Everyone goes around with a constant stream of thoughts going through their minds. For many of us, this stream is an unpleasant mix of self-pity, resentment and complaint (perhaps I speak only for myself here, but somehow I doubt it). God is encouraging us to beautify that stream of thoughts — to do a kind of spiritual toxic waste cleanup. We live with our own thought stream: why not live with the most beautiful, encouraging and pleasant thought stream we can have?

But even more than this kind of thought-stream revision, we are told to pray. Prayer — honest, personal prayer — is the distinctive form that Christian spirituality takes. We reach out to a God who we know by faith. We lay ourselves before him in honesty and submission (“worship” means “submission”). We seek to know him as he is, and we rejoice in his goodness toward us. We reveal our needs and our neediness:

… Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Prayer is person-to-person. In true prayer we reveal ourselves to God and experience his personal loving nature.

The Bible gives an account of Jesus contrasting prayer with “losing heart” or giving up:

And he told them a parable to the effect that they should always pray and not lose heart….”

We are also told that prayer makes a difference! This is one of the important consequences of the so-called “open view” of God and is affirmed by the Bible:

Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.

The conclusion of all this is simple: We Christians must learn to pray! — effectively and fervently. We need to take it seriously and grope our way to God by coming before him again and again. He waits for us — he invites us to pray — he sent his son to die so the way to his most intimate presence could be opened.

Mindfulness and other forms of meditation may or may not have benefits in this life, for health or sanity. But prayer has benefits in both this life and on to eternity.