The purpose of this research is to examine the phenomenon and practice of meditation as it relates to the experience or dogma of religion. The plan of the research will be to set forth the discursive context in which meditation is relevant to an understanding of religious sensibility and then to discuss ways in which meditation has surfaced in various religious traditions.
In the modern period, not least because of the profound effect of dissemination of information via the mass media, the concept of meditation in popular imagination appears to be most frequently associated with eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism. Indeed, a body of Western-style analysis has emerged regarding meditation in Buddhist tradition, theory, and practice. For example, distinctions in the character of meditation have been identified in such sectarian strands of Buddhism as Mahayana, including Yogacara, Pure Land, and some Tibetan practice; Theravada;, Vaishaika, Sautrantika, and Zen. What is consistent across all Buddhist teaching is that "[i]t is upon meditative practice that the religious life of the Buddhist virtuoso is based and from such practice that systematic Buddhist philosophical and soteriological theory begins" (Griffiths xiii). More generally, a distinction has been drawn between the religions of the West and those of the East, with the former characterized in significant part by doctrinal discourse of the distinction between God and mankind and the latter characterized almost entirely by discourse or sensibility of oneness of the Creation, divinity, and humanity:
The idea that God is a totally separate entity is deeply ingrained in most of the West. Christian churches simply don't know how to handle in any practical manner the underlying doctrine and contemplative realization of the oneness of God and all things. . .
In the East, on the contrary, dominant spiritual
traditions explicitly prepare adherents for the
pr...