You found your way to the shelf at the bookstore containing books on meditation. You hadn’t thought there would be so many! Picking a few interesting looking ones, you start thumbing through them and quickly realize they are not all saying the same thing. In fact, sometimes they seem to blatantly contradict each other. Now what?
If you continue with the books, you will come to realize that there are different forms or methods of meditation. The techniques and even the seeming goals may be different. In sorting through the books and teachings on meditation, I have found it helpful to get a larger perspective to provide a context for all the different practices.
All forms of meditation that I have studied seem to fall into three overall categories, based on what they are doing with thought in the mind. The forms are not so much inconsistent as they are just different. They are not lower or higher or better or worse. They are just different practices that all lead the practitioner from the normal outward focus of life to an inwardness of awareness.
We might call these three categories of meditation: concentration, contemplation, and mindfulness. Again, the distinction between the categories primarily being based on what we are doing with thought in each practice.
Concentration – These practices tend to be willful as you focus or direct your attention to some alternative for awareness other than your thoughts. Objects for the concentration practice may be the breath, or sensation, or a candle flame or image. The mind is rendered “thoughtless” as the awareness is continually brought back to the object of concentration. The goal is to curb existing thoughts and to prevent new thoughts from arising (No Thought).
Contemplation – A more devotional form of practice that creates a thoughtful state of meditation. The object for awareness here is a thought itself – a mantra or lines from a scripture or a prayer, or reflection on an attribute of your personal god, or some positive quality. The presentation of the Saint Francis prayer in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions is an example of contemplation. The goal in this practice is to hold the awareness to one thought to the exclusion of all other thoughts (One Thought).
Mindfulness – A spontaneous form of meditation that focuses awareness on the entire stream of thought in the mind. Analogies are often made to watching the thoughts as if they were passing clouds, or falling leaves, or rising bubbles. In order to keep from being pulled into the individual thoughts, you will need a strong sense of self as a witness separate from the thoughts themselves. The goal here is to pull back and watch the workings of the mind generating a continuous never-ending stream of thoughts (All Thought).
A faith oriented practitioner may find herself drawn to a contemplative form of meditation, while an action oriented practitioner may choose a concentration practice and a reason oriented practitioner may find mindfulness practices more inviting. There is no wrong answer.
Wishing you all the best in recovery,
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