Definitions are important – well, at least, I think so. My wife often accuses me of coming up with my own precise definitions and then expecting others to abide by them. You know what I say to that? I say, “What do you mean by precise and expecting?”
Well, all kidding aside, there are a couple of foundational definitions with respect to spiritual practices that I really do believe need a little exactness. The terms meditation, contemplation, mindfulness, and enlightenment. These terms are often confused/conflated when talking about spiritual matters, particularly due to the fact that they may carry very different meanings between East and West.
So, let’s disambiguate…
In Christian terms, contemplation is where the excitement is! Contemplation is the moment when God communicates with an individual, whether it is through words, images, or any other medium. It might be through a burning bush, a descending dove, or even something as simple as the words of a trusted friend – but God is there! So, contemplation is most accurately an action which happens to a participant rather than an action which is done by a participant. If we then turn our eyes to the East, the most appropriate term to compare with contemplation is enlightenment. So, in Christian terms, Gautama experienced contemplation under the Bodhi tree while in Buddhist terms, he obtained enlightenment.
Okay, you say…but what about the term meditation? Isn’t that the main category after all? That’s where the definitions get thorny. According to Susan Kaiser Greenland, in Mindful Games, the term meditation “in Tibetan means ‘familiarization,’ as in ‘familiarizing yourself with a new vision of things, a new way to manage your thoughts, of perceiving people and experiencing the world’” (p. 52). That is a consummate Eastern definition of the term, but it doesn’t quite mean the same thing in the West. In Christian usage, meditation does include a “reframing” aspect, but it is more focused on repetition and concentration.
For Christians, meditation is the practice of repeating and thinking over important truths or qualities of God for assimilation into one’s spirituality. In this sense, contemplation is a passive activity, and meditation is its active analog. While modern interpretations of meditation have tended to switch the relative meanings of contemplation and meditation, the Christian mystical tradition historically views meditation as active concentration on a particular idea or belief.
When looking back to the East, a new term comes into play: mindfulness. Greenland offers another good definition here: “The word mindfulness comes from the ancient languages Sanskrit and Pali, in which it is defined as ‘remembering’ – as in remembering the object of our attention” (p. 53). So, we can see that mindfulness is closer to the Christian meaning of meditation in the same way that enlightenment is closer to the Christian meaning of contemplation.
Now, why does all of this matter? Well, you may say that I’m splitting hairs – and you might be right (just don’t tell my wife!), but I think that foundational definitions like these are important when we push off into the deep waters of abstraction that spirituality offers to us. Also, I think realizing the different meanings given to these words is vital for cross-cultural conversation.
Nevertheless, food for thought…