Four years ago I wrote a blog post titled Is Contemplation Dangerous? It was a review of a book called The Buddha Pill: Can Meditation Change You? Written by two British psychologists, the book looks at a variety of meditation practices, such as Transcendental Meditation and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, the book offers a balanced assessment of what science has to say about how meditation...
How can the wisdom of the monastery help folks like you and me — who are not monks or nuns — to grow spiritually? To answer that question, we can begin by looking at The Rule of Saint Benedict. The Rule of Saint Benedict remains one of the great classics of western spirituality, even though it was written for a very small and specific audience: monks and nuns. What on the surface looks like an...
Recently a reader left the following comment on this blog: I have been reading and tried to practice the way of a contemplative life although poorly I believe. But my hunger for anything on the topic of contemplation continues. Recently I have also been enticed into “mindfulness” practices. Now what or how do you relation contemplation and Mindfulness? They’re beginning to sound that there is a...