How about a New Year’s resolution to dedicate some time every day to meditation? Not lip service or telling yourself it's a good idea, but really sitting down and meditating. James Ishmael Ford graciously highlighted some of my work with “The Examen” of Saint Ignatius in a sermon he gave a week ago Sunday at the Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist church in Pasadena, California. As an experiment, I removed almost all of Ignatius’s theology, but I didn’t intend to make him some hidden agnostic Zen Master. I just wanted to see if the Examen still had any teeth in a more agnostic context. The jury’s still out. Here’s a link to my piece, Looking at The Particular Examen of Saint Ignatius with Fresh Eyes.
A Meditation on Meditation
Getting a handle on a difficult term
The following is substantially the sermon I delivered for the worship service at the Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist church in Pasadena, California, on the 28th of December, 2025. If you are wondering what the hubbub is when people speak of “meditation,” perhaps this will help…
When I’m off for a Zen meditation retreat, I’ve long since stopped being mildly annoyed when friends respond to the news with something like, “Oh, I wish I could take off for a few days and just chill, too.”
Zen meditation retreats are many things, but chill is not something I would call one. Nor relaxing. Nor getting away.
What I realize is that when people use the word meditation, it really needs further definition.
Here is one way to begin to look at that term, and to consider whether it might actually be something of use, and if so, what kind of meditation might one seek.
I’ll start with a brief exploration of what people sometimes mean when using the word. And then a bit deeper of a dig into one or two ways of meditating that might be useful to many. And maybe tease another kind of meditation for those who are throwing themselves deep into the quest for meaning and direction.
I recall many years ago visiting the renowned San Francisco Zen Center. They have a tiny bookstore, which I like to drop by and investigate when I find myself at the Center. This time I noticed there was a small sign on offer. It read “Don’t just do something, sit there.”
I delighted in the pure counterculture of that sign.
In a sort of bottom-line sense, meditation usually means something we do with our heads. Often it is bringing our heads and our bodies together. Depending on who you’re talking to, meditation can be body scanning, that is noticing and usually relaxing parts of our bodies. It might involve visualization, or a somewhat similar form of guided meditation. It can be as simple as reflecting maybe on the day.
And. There are forms of meditation rooted in religious traditions, like Buddhism’s practice of loving kindness or Christianity’s Lecto Divina, reading sacred scriptures mindfully. Some meditations note thoughts or feelings as they arise. Others incorporate breath practices ranging from counting or following the breath to kundalini yoga using the breath to awaken energies. While still others are other kinds of body practices ranging from walking meditation to Qigong or Hatha yoga.
To begin a list.
For most secular forms of meditation might be particularly of interest.
The most probably most famous of these is Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, MBSR to the initiate. It’s a program developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn who was then a professor at the medical school at the University of Massachusetts in Worcester, and who would become the founder of the school’s Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society. Looking at his program, it is at its core simply dropping religious language from the ancient Buddhist meditation manual the Satipatthana Sutta, that is the “Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness.”
That text while probably drawing on sources that may go back to the historic Buddha himself, is generally believed to have been compiled in the first century before our common era. Kabat-Zinn expanded this meditation manual with other practices like guided meditation and yoga into an eight-week course he called that mindfulness-based stress reduction.
It has become wildly successful in the medical community to aid in stress management, chronic pain, and all in all offering a sense of general well-being. He and his associates moved beyond claims and applied controlled experiments to understand the why of it. Feel free to google for details. (Here’s a link directly to them) Out of his and his associate’s work MBSR has become a complementary discipline in treating depression, hypertension, and immune disorders.
However easily adapted it might be to secular uses, its worth noting meditation is rooted in religious or, if you will, spiritual sensibilities. The original goal is not that sense of well-being science has found in many of the disciplines.
With that the distinction between prayer and meditation can be a bit difficult to unravel. In Judaism prayer is often seen as more corporate action, the words addressed to God in a temple service for instance. While the word meditation is often reserved for private contemplation. For Christians while again prayer is often seen as directly addressing God, meditation often involves mentally unpacking a teaching, perhaps from scripture for spiritual solace and growth.
Buried in that is a definition I’ve seen around that while a bit triumphalist has some use. Here prayer is talking to the divine, while meditation is listening. The reality is that in both cases we’re being invited to our deepest encounters with the real. So disdain for the one is probably not as useful as one might think.
But what does this encounter with the real mean?
Well, several things.
Finding ways to give ourselves a little space and to look at what we’re up to can be an enormous gift. And honestly, this is the point of my sharing this meditation on meditation here and now, in the luminous moment of our moving from year into year. And with that finding ways to address the hurts both in our own hearts, and those of the world.
And while there are disciplines I consider going even deeper into the matter, here’s an example of that kind of meditation, where mental health and maybe some larger intimations of connection can be found in the adaptation of ancient spiritual practices.
An old friend of mine Ken Ireland is a former Jesuit. Although I’ve been told by friends there is in fact no such thing as a former Jesuit. I know him as a Zen practitioner who has lived for the last decade in Dharmsala, you know the Dalai Lama’s homebase in India, and because of visa issues for the past year in Thailand.
In his personal life Ken has adapted the famous Ignatian “Examination of Conscience,” also called the “Examen” in a secular, or at least somewhere in that area in a very interesting way. Like with MBSR, I see possibilities for the secularly minded. As well as for others on more specifically spiritual paths. With his permission, I share it here.
“Ignatius (who developed the large practice of his Spiritual Exercises in 1522) recommends undertaking the Examen for a relatively short period of time, 10-15 minutes, at three distinct times every day: upon rising, before the mid-day meal, and upon retiring. In the morning, as your day is not yet filled with conscious and unconscious actions, you resolve to reflect and remember what you are going to look for if you have identified a ‘chief characteristic.’” This is the nub of the discipline, seeing who you really are. Not what you would like to be, but who you are. And this is found in discovering that chief characteristic.
Ken continues. “Usually, you will hone in on what you’ve determined is your greatest obstacle to living in freedom and love - some trait, a repeating negative pattern, a persistent inner dialogue, resentment or prejudice. This becomes a tool that helps focus your review of the day’s events. It is almost always a moving target. You might work with a spiritual director to figure out a useful self-interrogation.”
So, with that invitation, Ken’s version of the steps of the Examen. There are a lot of parts to unpack, but here and now, I’m just giving the bare bones.
First: Quiet yourself. Become aware of the simple goodness of the universe. We see the gifts of life, the blessings of this human world through faith, the eye of love. Be thankful.
Then: Look within to see clearly, understand accurately, and respond generously to what is occurring in our lives.
Then: Review the history of the day (hour, week, or month) in order to see concrete, specific instances of the influence and activity of what we have identified as our chief characteristic. These can be detected by paying attention to strong feelings that may have arisen in situations and encounters. Over time more subtle feelings will become apparent.
Then: Examine these instances, our actions, reactions, words and feelings to see whether you have collaborated with deep inner guidance or yielded to the influence of evil in some way. Express gratitude and regret.
Then: Plan how to use our own inner guidance skillfully to avoid or overcome the negative influence of the chief characteristic in the future.
I’m quite taken with Ken’s secular Examen. It definitely fits the bill for a vital and useful kind of meditation. In his and Ignatius’ invitation, we see both our best and our worst. The real made personal.
And. In my own practice, you may have heard I’m a person of the Zen way, the discipline is less discursive.
That said, there are many mansions in the ways of mediation. Which brings both disadvantages and advantages. To my mind the disadvantages of Zen and its cousin mindfulness, mindfulness as an ancient Buddhist practice; includes less clarity on direction, less focus on accomplishment. But includes the advantages of finding perspective, of seeing who we are and how we exist within a web of relationships with other people and the world itself. And so something I’ve found might well be worth all the bother.
Maybe even something to try on in this new year, rife as it is with opportunities for hurt and healing.
A couple of years ago I wrote a brief piece for the Buddhist magazine “Lion’s Roar” offering a simple five-step guide to a basic mindfulness meditation practice.
I think sharing it here may be a good way to conclude my little meditation on meditation. It’s not Zen, which adds more wrinkles to the matter. But instead is a basic review of that core practice adapted by many in many times and places, including the good Dr Kabat-Zinn.
1. Choose a quiet and uplifted place to do your meditation practice. Sit cross-legged on a meditation cushion, or if that’s difficult, sit on a straight-backed chair with your feet flat on the floor, without (if you can) leaning against the back of the chair.
2. Place your hands palms down on your thighs (or knees) and take an upright posture with a straight back, relaxed yet dignified. With your eyes open, let your gaze rest comfortably as you look slightly downward about six feet in front of you.
3. Place your attention lightly on your out-breath, while (at the same time) remaining aware of the environment around you. Be with each breath as the air goes out through your mouth and nostrils and dissolves into the space around you. At the end of each out-breath, simply rest until the next breath goes out (of its own accord). For a more focused meditation (with fewer opportunities for distraction), you can follow both out-breaths and in-breaths.
4. Whenever you notice that a thought has taken your attention away from the breath, just say to yourself, “thinking,” and return to following the breath. In this context, any thought, feeling, or perception that distracts you is labelled “thinking.” (There are more advanced forms that slice and dice the distractions for finely. But “thinking” really will do.) Thoughts are not judged as good or bad. When a thought (or sensation or feeling) arises, just gently note it and return your attention to your breath and posture.
5. At the end of your meditation session, five minutes, ten, or half an hour, or perhaps a full hour, bring calm, mindfulness, and openness into the rest of your day.
The good folk at Lion’s Roar provided lovely illustrations for the piece. One in particular showed the meditator fully engaged. They had a relaxed person sitting with arrows pointing out from all around her body.
I wrote back about how the illustrations, as pretty as they were, and they were, missed the deeper point of this exercise. We’re not trying to project ourselves out into the world in this practice but allowing ourselves to encounter the world as it actually presents itself to us. That real once more. Or, at least to come as close as such can be accomplished given the limitations of our senses, and our endless proclivity to put a story on everything.
The twelfth-century Japanese Zen master Eihei Dogen in his essay, Uji, “Being Time,” put it like this:
“When the self advances and confirms the ten thousand things, the world, is called delusion. But when the ten thousand things come to the self, that is called awakening.”
In my note to my editors at Lion’s Roar, I said the arrows should be pointed toward the meditator.
They wrote back how that was lovely, but they paid good money for the illustrations and they were staying.
I suspect there are several lessons to be gleaned from that exchange.
So. A little grist for the mill. Something that might even be of use as we move out of this lamented year into, well, who knows what we’re moving into.
And, if you’re wanting to go deeper still, there are other types of meditation, as well.
Zen, for one. The way of my heart…
