Skip to main content

Can you practice different forms of meditation together?


In contemplative traditions, you’ll find many examples where different forms of meditative practices are used together. For instance, in Buddhism mantra meditation, mindfulness meditation, visualisation meditation etc. are all used. This is also true within backspace the Roman Catholic tradition where they use mantra meditation (example the Rosary), mindfulness meditation in the form of contemplative prayer, and visualisation imagination prayer an example that used in the Ignatian tradition.
Remember that at the basic meditation is using an anchor of attention as a point to return to when the mind wanders. All the above forms of meditation use different types of anchors of attention to return to when the mind wanders.
Remember, it’s not a question of what meditation practice or anchors of attention you use. It’s about finding what best works for you to calm the mind. So if you find benefit from practising different forms of meditation together beneficial for you as they help you remain grounded in the present moment during your daily life. Then that’s okay as that is one of the purposes of most forms of meditation.
References

 Finding a suitable anchor of attention in meditation

Constructive meditation practices: The fascinating cognitive processes at work (part two)

 Deconstructive meditation practices: The fascinating cognitive processes at work (part three)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sound and Stillness In Our Practice

 We could say that we are immersed in a world of sounds. If you pay attention, almost every minute of your waking life is filled with some form of sound: most prominently the ambient sounds in our natural environment, including music and radio, conversations and messages, and the cacophony of thoughts in your own head. Considering all of this, we have to ask ourselves: How frequently do you get genuine moments of silence in our everyday life? If we reflect, it seems that we have the inclination for filling moments of silence or stillness with noise and distraction and all other activities in between. What is the reason for this? Why do we have this inclination towards filling up moments of silence with some type of activity?   Because it seems that silence makes us feel uneasy, and since silence makes us feel uncomfortable, we will automatically try to fill it up. Why? In moments of silence or stillness, we return to ourselves, which is not always an easy thing to do to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to Live Without Regret?

By  living mindfully wholesomely cultivating the beautiful and the good. This is made possible through the seeds of generosity, kindness, and compassion that live in every human heart. These qualities ennoble our hearts and leave no residue of regret in our minds.
Post a Comment
Read more

Cracking the Ice of Delusion

The highest expression of our human nature is arrived through the purification of our minds.  This is the purpose of the practice of meditation through the use of an anchor of attention . Our mind is by nature comparable to a clear sky, the thoughts in our mind are compared the clouds. To clear away the clouds in meditation whenever you notice that your mind is lost in thought you acknowledged that and return back to your anchor of attention and the sky like nature of mind. With time and practice, this clearing away of the clouds results in the breaking of the sheets of snow and ice that we are encased in or the breaking up of our delusions and our habitual patterns of reactivity.
Post a Comment
Read more