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Prayer beats meditation because it is active. It forces you to face up to your life, not simply let it wash past you. It makes you speak your desires, and own your failures. Passively sitting around hoping for change sounds like avoidance, to me.

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雲水

@foodofthegods3

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@ThinkInPeach

Who says meditation includes "hoping for change"? Does prayer not include "hope for change"―and how is it any more dynamic or active in achieving this change? Besides imagining that you're achieving something, of course. Your perception of meditation seems quite shallow.

1:25 AM · Mar 12, 2021Twitter Web App

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and

One might argue that meditation is so active in attending to the ever-present reality that most people are exhausted by it and choose to remain in the lull of distraction.

雲水

@foodofthegods3

Mar 12, 2021

Oh yes, that would make sense. Perhaps it is easier to direct consciousness through the mental filter of 'God' in a prayer rather than facing the raw, unfiltered reality in deep meditation. But then again, what's the fundamental difference between that and God?

Replying to

Perhaps. I see it as overly fetishized. I'm sure some achieve their purposes using it. Unfortunately, the responses I receive when I criticize meditation only further my belief it is ineffective. I'd argue the very least it should offer is emotional detachment.

雲水

@foodofthegods3

Mar 12, 2021

🙏 to each their own of course. But, as Alan Watts said: "You can make any human activity into meditation simply by being completely with it and doing it just to do it." Most think of meditation as sitting on one's butt trying to focus, which is a caricature of real meditation.

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