Religious and Spiritual Experience
64
each day, in which the mind is stilled by maintaining awareness of the
abdominal movements in breathing. During this exercise I feel that on
occasion I am aware of a presence in the stillness, but not nearly as fre-
quently as in Orthodox Christian prayer.
In the summer of 1969 I began the practice of Buddhist Meditation
described above. One afternoon about three weeks after I had started
the daily practice, my whole being seemed
struck down by a blinding
flash of light. I was completely overwhelmed by the experience, which
occurred shortly after I had begun the day’s stint of meditation. My
feelings were a combination of ecstasy, terror and awe. The experience
came utterly unexpectedly and I felt that God had given me a vision of
his power. For two days afterwards everything I did, even what would
normally be boring drudgery, filled me with the greatest delight. I felt
it didn’t matter what happened to me; everything was very good. [from
003519]
Here is an experience recounted by a Christian philosopher of religion,
Revd Professor John Hick,
I have been practising meditation, in
a faltering sort of way, for some
years, using the mindfulness method that I learned from the Sri Lankan
Buddhist monk Nyanaponika Mahathera . . . The one moment of
breakthrough that I have experienced so far was only a few months
ago. In normal consciousness I am here and the world is there,
apart from me, surrounding me and so to speak hemming me in, and
arousing all sorts of hopes and fears. But as I opened my eyes after
perhaps ten minutes of meditating I was suddenly vividly aware of
being an integral part of the world, not separate from it, and that that
of which I am a part is a friendly universe, so that there could not
possibly be anything to fear or worry about. It
was the same world,
and yet totally transformed, and for a short time – only one or two
minutes – I was completely free and completely happy. I was by myself
at the time; but if this new consciousness had continued into daily life
I believe that my attitude to others would have been a liberation from
self-concern making possible love and compassion for everyone I had
to deal with.
56
Within the Christian tradition, meditation was revived for Christians
by Dom John Main, who was instructed in meditation in what was then
Malaya (now Malaysia) by a Hindu monk. When
John Main became a
Benedictine monk, he was instructed to give up the practice. But through
Religious Triggers
65
his reading he discovered the forgotten form of prayer of the Desert Fathers
and Mothers and of the Conferences of John Cassian and instigated a
Christian form of meditation using the mantra ‘Maranatha’, meaning
‘Come Lord’. Dom Laurence Freeman has taken over the mantle of lead-
ing the World Community for Christian Meditation, www.wccm.org.
Some Christians, particularly the Eastern Orthodox, use the Jesus
Prayer,
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
It is repeated over
and over again like a mantra, responding to the idea
that one should ‘pray without ceasing’. In this account, the practice
brought great comfort at a difficult time,
During October of 1972 my father was dying after a long and painful
illness. Towards the end, my mother was finding the strain very trying
so I volunteered to sleep in the bedroom with my father. In fact he was
in considerable pain, had lost the power of speech and every few min-
utes during the night he attempted to get out of bed. The whole experi-
ence of trying to make him as comfortable as possible during the night
was like a nightmare to me. I found myself
repeating the Jesus Prayer,
‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’. As I con-
tinued to repeat the words silently, I began to feel wonderfully happy,
and for the rest of the night what had been a terrible experience became
a delight. I felt that my father and I cemented a bond which had been
broken between us for many years. [from 003519]
Here is an experience based on this prayer, using a technique known as
sanyama
, which brings together concentration, meditation and Samadhi –
meditative absorption.
I found the Jesus Prayer . . . in Metropolitan Anthony’s book
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