Meditation and Contemplative Prayer
Christians are sometimes suspicious of meditation because they think of it as Buddhist. But, meditation has long had a well established place in Christianity where it is called contemplation. This raises the question of the relationship between meditation and contemplation.
Dr. Donald Woodside is a retired psychiatrist and good friend whose spiritual journey combines Christian faith and Buddhist meditation. Join us in a conversation I had with him about his journey of interspirituality and his practice of both meditation and contemplative prayer.
David: To get us started, tell me a bit about your early religious background.
Don: I grew up in a liberal Christian church, but after struggling as a teenager with the idea of the physical resurrection of Christ, I abandoned religious faith. I did, however, have a vague interest in Eastern religions. They seemed to hold the promise of wisdom and a connection to the divine. A highly moral life was about as close as we Westerners seemed to get.
David: When did you first start to meditate?
Don: I began to meditate on a regular basis in 1978 when I joined a local meditation group, which I still attend. I also began regular participation in nine-day retreats at a Buddhist meditation centre. My practice is mindfulness. I start by watching the breath. When my mind settles, I let go of the breath and relax into choiceless awareness. Mindfulness is a kind of unattached awareness of the objects of consciousness that arise and pass, without identifying them as “I” or “mine.”
David: How does this relate to Christian approaches to contemplation?
Don: Meditation is very similar to centering prayer. It is allowing the mind to rest in God’s peace and gently returning each time one is distracted. In both we aim to see ourselves as part of the whole of God’s world, not separate. One important difference, however, is that in prayer I don’t have a sense of effort to become something different. Prayer is about silence, waiting and listening in a relationship with the divine.
David: How did Christianity again become part of your journey?
Don: In the spring of 1980 I suffered a lengthy and disabling laryngitis, and needing complete silence, went to a silent Easter retreat at an Ignatian retreat house. I was stunned by the realization that the passion of Christ was ongoing – that somehow it was happening within me, and it was calling me to respond. It touched my heart deeply. Soon after this my wife and I started attending a Quaker meeting. But the real connection with Christianity occurred when I did the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises in 1986. I had the sense of God knowing my innermost thoughts. I experienced the presence of the indwelling Christ. I identified with Christ and was touched deeply by his teaching, “I am the vine, and you are the branches.”
David: How do you decide when to pray and when to meditate?
Don: On one level, I experience them as the same. Both are responses to the divine in ourselves and in others. Both are movements of reconciliation with all of life as God’s world. Both embody surrender.
Most of my daily practice is meditation. I have a range of techniques to focus my mind and settle into a mode of receptivity. Sometimes this turns into a prayer of waiting and listening. When I awaken at night and just want to get back to sleep, I meditate. But when I feel distressed, overwhelmed, and anxious, I pray. I express my need, and I recall Isaiah, where God says, “I have carved you in the palms of my hands.” I then feel held in love.
David: Does this make prayer more relational than meditation?
Don: I have always experienced prayer as relational. I recall being on a two-month meditation retreat some years ago and spending an hour a day in prayer rather than meditation. It was the first time I had felt a clear difference. There was a sense of movement in prayer – out of myself into something unknown and vast but loving. This felt different from the unfolding stillness of meditation. Now, if I am feeling fear or despair, I drift towards prayer.
One effect of both the Ignatian exercises and Buddhist meditation has been to soften the boundaries of self, so that God is experienced as both inside and outside me. Someone described Buddhism as emptying and Christianity as filling. For some years I practiced that way; first I would empty, then I would fill. These two things are no longer different for me. When I am empty, it means self is in abeyance, and I am filled by all things which are present. These things exist for themselves, not for me, and are sacred. So emptying of self is the same as filling with the divine.
David: Trusting openness to the divine presence seems natural to children. Why is that so hard for adults?
Don: Children are capable of unstinting trust. But becoming “as children” is hard for adults because we identify with our thoughts and actions, with doing and having. A contemplative relationship with God requires that we clear the chatter and the selfish wishes, even surrender our images of God. This is what Quaker meetings involve – sitting in silent expectation, open to others and to myself, constantly returning to the stillness, sifting through arising thoughts without being either averse to them or attached. While this is often hard work, sometimes, when self has calmed down, it is entirely natural and effortless to rest in the Spirit.
David: How do you understand contemplative prayer?
Don: I think of it as being with God, surrounded and infused by the energy of the Holy Spirit. My part in entering this relationship is to let go. One of the things I let go of is any notion of who or what God is. I surrender, I rest, I am held in a gentle embrace. I sometimes have the feeling that the Holy Spirit transports me outside of time and space, into an eternal time in which Jesus is as present now as historically. This sounds dramatic, but it is subtle. My mind certainly can run on about God. When it does, I simply allow such thoughts to pass through, content with not knowing.
David: How do contemplative prayer and social action go together?
Don: Contemplative prayer brings the eternal inside. It moves from a prayer to an external God, to a relationship with a divine presence which does not respect boundaries. If God is everywhere then everything we do, everyone we interact with, is in some sense a home to what is holy. As a result, I have a responsibility and desire to respect what Quakers describe as “that of God in all persons.” If your eyes have been opened, you have to act on what you see.
David: Any final comments on how Buddhist meditation fits with Christian prayer?
Don: For a long time it was painful to feel divided loyalties. The scripture which posed the most direct challenge to me was, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me.” But when I looked deeply at these words of Jesus, I saw that they could be understood as saying, “Faith in me is a gateway to the Kingdom of God,” that we don’t get to God except by love and surrender. Allegiance to Christ is allegiance to the force of love. That teaching isn’t in conflict with teachings of the Buddha. We can get to selflessness by different routes. But there is only one God.
We are like fish in the sea, which cannot know the sea they are immersed in. We humans are immersed in God, and from our vantage point this makes God indescribable. Buddhism has given me a framework for understanding how human beings fall into sin, greed, hatred, and the “illusion of self.” It has given me a method for investigating these phenomena of consciousness, for validating the teachings for myself, and for waking up and opening my heart. This has been a blessing.
On the other hand, in Christianity God meets me where I am, says I am acceptable, and comes to me as the risen Christ. I don’t have to achieve anything. I don’t have to believe that I will ever escape my limitations. This unconditional acceptance has been a great relief and a way to turn daily life into opportunities for devotion. It would be easier to have allegiance to only Christ or the Buddha, but I can’t turn my back on either. I don’t know exactly where all this is going, but I no longer struggle. I am reassured by a quotation from the early Quaker, William Penn, who said, “The humble, meek, merciful, just, pious, and devout souls are everywhere of one religion; and when death has taken off the mask they will know one another, though the divers liveries they wear here make them strangers.”
David: Great way to end a great conversation. Thanks!
2021 © Dr. David G. Benner