Christian Meditation

One of the most important spiritual developments of the 20th century was the exposure of the West to Eastern spiritual ideas and practices. Zen Buddhism came to the United States, and the Beatles went to India. In the 1950s, John Main, a Christian serving in the British Army, was sent to Malaysia. During his work there, he met an Indian swami who taught Main to meditate using a mantra. This is a short word that is repeated silently while meditating. Main discovered that ancient and Medieval Christian monks had also used this technique ( see the posts in this series from The Cloud of Unknowing). Main brought this practice back to the monasteries when he became a monk in the 1960s. He is credited with re-introducing meditation to Christianity.

“In meditating we are not seeking to possess God or to arrive at a profound insight about God. We are seeking simply to accept the gift of our own creation as fully as we presently can and to respond to it as generously as we can. To do this we learn to be still, to be silent, and be truly humble. 

In common day language the essence of meditation is to leave the ego behind. We are not trying to see with the ego what is happening. Ego-vision is limited by its own self-centrelines. The eye with which we see without limit as the eye that cannot see itself. The paradox of meditation is it once we give up trying to see and to possess, then we see all, and all things are ours.”

A central tenet of Main’s thought and practice is that when we meditate silently, we leave aside all our ideas about who we are. We asked to simply be in God’s silent presence. This is very frustrating to our egos, which like to chatter on about how important we are. But everything our ego says about us, good and bad, is just window dressing to the fact that we exist, in God, within God, and that we flow from God. Main advised that anyone who really wants to have a serious relationship with God should meditate every day, preferably twice. Christian meditation has slowly been making a comeback since his fateful meeting with that swami. Peace. 

-Rev. Stephen Milton, Lawrence Park Community Church, Toronto

John Main, Essential Writings, (New York, 2002), 109. 

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