Meditation

Meditation, engagement in contemplation, especially of a spiritual or devotional nature.

For information on:

• religions and spiritual disciplines that practice meditation, see Asceticism; Buddhism: Formation of Buddhist Literature and following sections; Chinese Philosophy: Buddhism; Chinese Philosophy: School of Mind; Confucianism: Neo-Confucianism; Dervish; Fakir; Hinduism: Categories of Ritual; Kabbalah; New Age Movement; Sikhism: Theology; Tibetan Buddhism: Rituals, Holidays, and Scriptures; Yoga: The Eight Stages; Zen: Doctrines and Practices and following sections; Mahayana Buddhism: Doctrine; Eightfold Path; Mandala; Guru Nanak: Nanak’s Teaching
• devices associated with meditation, see Koan; Rosary; Stations of the Cross
• people who adopted a meditative life, see Giovanni Boccaccio; Antoinette Bourignon; Buddha; Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi; Al-Ghazali; Hugh of Saint Victor; Margery Kempe; Isaac ben Solomon Luria; Philipp Jakob Spener; Rudolf Steiner; Henry David Thoreau; Dōgen; Huineng
• literary works that deal with meditation, see Bible; Bhagavad-Gita; Chinese Literature: Poetry; Essay: Origin of the Essay Form; Upanishads; Veda: Supplementary Writings
• authors who wrote meditations or in a meditative style, see Maya Angelou; Matthew Arnold; Bashō; Anne Bradstreet; William Dunbar; Dag Hammarskjöld; Alphonse de Lamartine; Anne Morrow Lindbergh; Saint Ignatius of Loyola; Marcus Aurelius; Thomas Merton; Edward Taylor; Paul Ambroise Valéry; Wang Wei
• psychological and physiological studies of the meditative state, see States of Consciousness: Interest in Altered States
• meditation as a relaxation technique, see Psychotherapy: Types of Therapy