THE ART OF MEDITATION

One of my favorite writers, Jack Miles, in introducing The Best American Spiritual Writing (2004), states two distinctive ways to meditate.

The 1st exercise was learned while being a Jesuit seminarian - and was supposedly the 6th step in the Ignatian school of spirituality. The method was to think about doing anything (but not praying) while in the presence of God.

The 2nd, learned after he left the order and the church and while in the thick of learning Buddhism, was the practice known as "the slaying of the mind", with the mind being pictured as a hyperactive monkey hopping from branch to branch. In this exercise, the one meditating will not be like Jesus in the Gethsemane (1st method) but somebody attempting to kill the monkey.

According to Miles, both exercises were experientially real.

I will have to try these.