Talk:Christian meditation

message: No mention of Ignatius Loyola? DJ Clayworth 13:57, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Loyola

message: Meditation is currently a nominee on WP:IDRIVE. If you would like to see this article improved vote for it on WP:IDRIVE.--Fenice 15:33, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Improvement Drive

message: Does the pope oppose contemplative prayer?  I don't think so; if you disagree, please quote something the pope said, instead of falsely giving the impression that some fundamentalist tracts were written by the pope.  Thank you. Samboy (talk) 19:39, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: In the first instance there is no support that any Christian group opposes contemplative prayer. And the present pope has made a statement condemning New Age practice among Catholics, which probably includes contemplative prayer. To clear this up perhaps you might care to offer some support that the Pope advocates contemplative prayer? 
Mombas (talk) 08:16, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Does the pope oppose contemplative prayer?

message: Further to above question on Popes views. The section is very vague based upon "some" Christians. It gives claims that Pope John Paul dissaproved meditation without any direct quotation. Conversly, it gives some direct quotations without explaining the relevance of the commenter or anything at all for that matter. One of the quotations is about neither Christianity or criticism but rather is about saying "Meditation is important to New Age". The weblink citation about John Paul certainly does talk about his New Age warnings but nothing about meditation. The section is truly a fine example of the good reasons for WP:Original Research. There may be scope for a section on Christian critcism of meditation, which I doubt, but this section today is improper, has been for some time, and I plan to delete it in the next few days because it spreads funny ideas rather than information. I assume good faith and apologise to the work put in to it. Try again with a little less sermonage and a bit more causality. (?) ~ R.T.G 05:33, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Done ~ R.T.G 23:33, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Criticism" section 

message: This article seems to need cleanup and better references. Example problems:
:* There are only 5 references, 2 of which are from the first paragraph and the St Theresa discussion that I touched up a few days ago. So there are just 3 references for the rest of the text - this needs help.
:* The section meditation: many strands does not produce any coherent ideas, but lists the names of people and links to Church names! I think it needs to be trimmed back or deleted and replaced with referenced text.
:* Theology of Christian meditation starts with a discussion of Hindu ideas! And it has very little to say.
:* Scriptural basis has NO reference and the rest of the article has "citation needed" tags. 
I am going to clean these up in the next few days. In the meantime suggestions will be appreciated. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 15:41, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, it ended up being a 90% rewrite, but it has 30 references now. History2007 (talk) 20:07, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Article clean up

message: I made some of my own editions.  Being Eastern Orthodox myself, I noticed that there was some false or misleading information provided in the section dedicated to Eastern Christian meditation (Section 4.2).  
For one, the Christian hesychastic tradition does not use a mantra, and that is even pointed out in Wikipedia's own article on Hesychasm.  I edited that part out myself and replaced it with something more accurate and cited some references produced by practitioners of the Orthodox Faith.
Another problem I noticed was that the Jesus Prayer, I think, has been misquoted as being "Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of Living God, have mercy on me".  I have never heard the word 'Living' used in that prayer in any of the parishes or monasteries I've ever visited.  I didn't edit this text, though, since I do not know if this is a direct quote from the author's cited reference.
I also feel that this section is largely lacking sufficient information.  I think it should be expanded to investigate possible differences of practice between the Assyrian, Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, and Eastern Rite Catholics, if there are any.  A suggestion to visit the Wikipedia article on Hesychasm would also be appropriate here.  
Finally, I do believe a promotion of this article up from mid-importance should be considered, since Christian meditation is actually a very important aspect of Eastern Christianity.  While the Western Christians may approach the Christian faith from a scholastic angle, the Eastern Christians take a primarily experiential and meditative approach to gaining spiritual enlightenment.  One cannot understand Eastern Christianity properly without engaging in the meditative practices it prescribes to some degree.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Nahuatl6 (talk • contribs) 18:43, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: My friend that is what happens when a Roman Catholic writes about Eastern items he does not know about. lease feel free to correct them. History2007 (talk) 19:00, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problems in Eastern Christianity section 

message: In section 3, titled "Approaches to Meditation", only Western Post-Great Schism Christian Saints are used in describing approaches to Christian meditation.  This is a problem, since meditation plays in central role in the praxis of Eastern Christianity.
I would suggest adding to this section the surviving teachings of such Eastern Christians as St. John Climacus (of the Ladder) and the Ladder of Divine Ascent, St. Gregory of Sinai, St Gregory Palamas, St. Seraphim of Sarov, Evagrius Ponticus, and I would highly encourage paying a lot of attention to the Sayings of the Desert Fathers and St. Anthony the Great, as well as the Philokalia.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nahuatl6 (talk • contribs) 19:23, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Please provide a few Google book references here on the talk page so the items you suggest can be cleanly organized before they get added to the page.  And please provide a categorization of the approaches of these people. Please also see Christian mysticism and teh talk page there. There is need for improvements on the desert Fathers etc. in both places. I need to do research before I can address the Eastern issues, but your references here and on that other page will probably help start the process. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 04:25, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing Information in Section 3 "Approaches to Meditation" 

message: The following sentence from this article,
"While some non-Christian and mystic meditations use mantras to block thought and erase concepts, most traditions of Christian meditation are intended to stimulate thought and deepen meaning,"
isn't exactly accurate. John Dunne, in a speech given at Stanford University, available for viewing online here: http://ccare.stanford.edu/node/21 , says that in Buddhism there is a type of meditation where people will repeatedly bring to mind a concept to become more familiar with it, and then to eventually experience the concept in a more, "visceral," way. So then this type of meditation sounds a bit similar to Christian meditation itself, though I am not an expert on Christian meditation. Anyways, John Dunne actually cites as an example of this Buddhist type of meditation, of familiarizing oneself with a concept, the use of "mantra," repetition. Therefore the use of mantras is not for the purpose of blocking thoughts or erasing concepts, but is more akin to stimulating analysis and familiarization with a concept, with the ultimate goal of experiencing that concept more viscerally. Hope this helps. makeswell (talk) 16:25, 11 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  sentence in the lede and the accurate portrayal of mantra repetition 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Christian meditation. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20091207062434/http://www.macedonian-heritage.gr:80/Athos/General/AthosHistory.html to http://www.macedonian-heritage.gr/Athos/General/AthosHistory.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 05:47, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I have added a template to the section that should actually describe what Christian meditation is. So far, this is not happening. The article circles around an empty center. It‘s like describing soccer without ever mentioning that people kick a ball in the act of playing. What are Christian meditators actually doing? Please also consider that for non Christians words like God and Holy Spirit do not hold objective truth so using these to explain the performance of meditation may not be very helpful. Reading further into the article it might make sense to merge the sections „Context“ and „Approaches“ or at least present the approaches earlier in the text to present the reader a lively definition of what CM is before the bulk of other sections follow. ElisabethGeuten (talk) 06:21, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup 2024