There is an assumption that meditation requires silence and that a spoken guide is only meant as an introduction to silence.
Meditation is not about the absence of thoughts or the burning of logic. Such is impossible. It is simply attention.
In the West, meditation involves focused thinking. In the East, it involves focused being.
But meditation is not thinking or not thinking. It is simply focusing, paying attention, being intentional about how to control that attention.
You can pay attention to someone’s words the same way you pay attention to your thoughts. It is what happens when we read or when we listen to someone read. It is possible to meditate in such instances.
You can understand the nature of your mind by contemplating the thoughts of somene else, which is the objective of contemplation anyways. Eventually, you transcend the “self” which leads you to pay attention to that which is not you.
Poetry creates attentive speech, a third frontier between you and the world. It is the verbal artform by which we can create silence.
Related
To do
- Do some more research on the etymology of meditation. Is there an exact word from the East that is used? How different is that word with the English word meditation?
References
Harris, S. (n.d.). Making Sense with Sam Harris: #240—The Boundaries of Self (No. 240). Retrieved October 4, 2022, from https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/240-the-boundaries-of-self/id733163012?i=1000511990154