Mindful Happiness

Anthony Quintiliani, Ph.D, LADC

  • Home
  • Dr. Anthony Quintiliani
    • About
  • Mindful Happiness
  • Mindful Expressions Meditation CD
  • Contact

March 30, 2016 By Admin

Early Judeo-Christian Meditation Practice

Looking at Early Judeo-Chrsitian Meditation Practice

An early description of enlightened liberation in Buddhist meditation practice reads like mindful-happiness-mahasaccaka-sutrathis: Birth is destroyed, the spiritual life has been lived, what had to be done has been done. There is no more coming back to any state of being.  Ignorance was banished and true knowledge arose, darkness was banished and light arose, as happens in one who dwells diligent, ardent, and resolute.”  From the Mahasaccaka Sutra.

In Gnosticism (considered by some the first roots of Christianity), but which  predates formal Christianity, core spiritual and religious beliefs shifted from having knowledge of god and Jesus to a mystical oneness with god. This was a judeo-christian-meditation-MindfulHappinesssignificant change in one’s relationship to divinity.  With sitting in prayer and meditation one of the earliest known forms of formal meditation is the Judeo-Christian practice of Hesychast.  This meditation method implied great grace and personal commitment to practice.  Some of the key characteristics of Hesychast meditation are as follows.

  1. Your correct posture represents your correct attitude.
  2. Emphasis on the body implies it is the temple of your spirit.
  3. “Sit down like a mountain” and synchronize your breath as if a flowing ocean. Remain focused on your breath – breathing in, and breathing out.  Continue to focus on the flow of your breath.
  4. Recognize that the deeper sea is more calm than the surface waves. Breathe with “oceanic respiration.”
  5. Listen carefully to your breath. Be at peace with the inhalation, the source of inspiration. Notice the end of the exhalation – more pure peace again.
  6. According to scripture, the Samaritan woman was told to become one with the breath of her spirit and the spirit of the breath.
  7. Be like a mountain, a bird, a flower, an ocean when you meditate. The Old Testament meditations included the Jewish “haga” and the Latin “Meditatio.”  These are roots of future meditation practices.
  8. Meditate from the throat as you are murmuring the “name” of who you believe in. Allow the murmuring to vibrate in the body. Meditating on the “name” was common in various forms of Hindu, Buddhist and early Christian practices. Repeat, be virtuous, and note the sacred name again and again.
  9. Now as you breathe, invoke the name, and make an image of the face of who you believe in – allow the sacred presence to enter your heart.  This is a form of heart-centering spirituality.
  10. Practice using your inner chant of the name to awaken your heart – BE in the light and BE in the peace!
  11. Work on meditating via a constant presence – peace, light, love, non-judgmental, non-attachment, compassion, and awaken your heart’s vital center of the divine. Become one!
  12. Stay steady and deep as you meditate in transcendence of the universe and all the 10,000 things.
  13. It is only YOU here now. Just ONE!
  14. Now end your meditation and simply reflect and contemplate on your experience.

For more information refer to Leloup, J-Y (2000, 2009 Edn.). Compassion and Meditation: The Spiritual Dynamic Between Buddhism and Christianity. Translated by J. Rowe. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, pp. 21-36.

By Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, VermontChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

CLICK HERE  or any image below to Order 

Mindful Happiness cover designs.indd

MindfulHappiness_Amazon           mindful-happiness_barnes_and_noble

Filed Under: ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, Featured, Judea-Christian Meditation, Meditation, Thoughts & Opinions Tagged With: DR ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, JUDEAO-CHRISTIAN MEDITATION

Twitter

Mindful Happiness -Currently in Production

Mindful Happiness Posts

Crisis Resilience Skills  – Mindful Happiness Below I will list various interventions that have proven effective in reducing the level of personal crisis. The sources for many of these skills came from Burns (1980), Ellis (1995), Seligman (1988), Linehan (1993, 2015)), Hayes (2018), and Thich Nhat Hanh (various publications). The skills noted are for immediate […]

Chronic Pain and Doing Body Scanning Although doing body scans cannot fully relieve your pain, it may help you manage it better. If your pain is serious and chronic you need to work with a qualified pain management professional, who will use both psychological and medical interventions. Note that a recent issue of Consumer Reports reviewed […]

Insights – Vipassana Mediation There will be future, more advanced vipassana meditations posted on the site. For now, however, we will end this series with a final post about the insights often experienced via vipassana meditation. We learn via experience about impermanence, suffering and its causes, no-self, emptiness and many other things – or, perhaps, […]

Meditation on Gratitude – Why it is so Important The daily rapid vibrations from our fast-paced and sometimes dangerous world may impact us in ways that make unhealthy norms of being. The struggle to feel good enough, to have enough, to be somebody, to keep up with the raging ads about what you need NOW and […]

Subtle and Direct Experiences of Happiness Khenpo Sherab Zangpo’s 2017 publication The Path: A Guide to Happiness, Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications has much to offer about how to become a happier person.  Read over the listing below and see what you may be missing. Try this mantra: “I am happy the way I am.” “I am happy […]

Meditating in the Gap of Nothingness The Buddha taught about your four best friends, that is how the body changes physiology when you sit, stand, walk/move and every time you are lying down. Modern Western neuroscience now supports this statement of 2500+ years ago. Thich Nhat Hanh added the importance of your breath, walking meditation, […]

The Heart Sutra – Thich Nhat Hanh “Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha.” This ultimate mantra is one of the most important in Buddhism. Thich Nhat Hanh’s new translation of The Heart Sutra offers a great deal of enlightened, sometimes more advanced, information and process. Avalokitesvara and other great Bodhisattvas present important views of this […]

Mindful Movement as Part of Practice Mindful movement is an accepted part of regular practice. Such practices as walking meditation, more vigorous yoga asanas, qi gong, and tail chi are all part of this respected mindfulness tradition. Here I will introduce you to a very simple pre-meditation movement sequence.  Hope you practice it very soon. […]

Henry David Thoreau  & Walking Meditation Henry David Thoreau is, perhaps, the most individualistic of the American Transcendentalists. He asked us to consider what we have learned that is useful as we travel our own “stream of life.” He cautions us not to regret when we die that we “had not lived.” He advised us to […]

Tantric Meditation on Emptiness of Self Mind training on emptiness of self requires single-pointed attention and concentration on space, empty space. Emptiness awareness in equipoise of meditation appears as the empty of space. When we practice this repeatedly with calm abiding we can attain direct experience of non-conceptual realization – true emptiness. Awareness of emptiness […]

Relapse Prevention Plans – The Basics T. T. Gorski, Anthony R. Quintiliani, Ph.D., LADC The following information about how to develop effective relapse prevention plans has been paraphrased from the Work of Terrence T. Gorski.  It is highly practical and a concrete way to develop your skills in relapse prevention interventions. Intermediate (Marlatt and Gordon) […]

Gurdjieff’s The Fourth Way to Consciousness: Background A core teachings is that there are three ways of being: the fakir (master of the physical body); the monk (master of faith and feeling); and, the yogi (master of mind development).  A key goal is to KNOW yourself at the deepest levels.  To KNOW is to be, […]

Mindfulness Can Activate More Grace in Our Lives Today we all need to be cultivating more and deeper grace.  Grace needs to be activated. Given so many of our cultural problems (murders and mass murders by gunfire, rampant personal and corporate greed, ego-entitlement, chronic stress, feelings of insecurity, technological advances that do not ADVANCE us, […]

Anahata – Heart Chakra Meditation Practice Rumi noted that to reach the sky we must use our hearts. The Heart Chakra is a very popular focus of meditation practice.  Here we will simply review some characteristics and then move on to a meditation practice. Specific characteristics: Green color, YAM sound (say at least three times […]

Participate in Groups for Meditation, Problem-Solving, and Task Completion Meditation With The Sangha Among regularly practicing meditators and various meditation traditions, the sangha is the social, emotional and spiritual collective that continues to support ongoing serious practice and progress along the Path.  Given that so much has been written about the many benefits of practicing […]

Happiness Path  – The 14th Dalai Lama His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama has suggested, among many other important things, that humans may experience true inner happiness by regular practice on the path to enlightenment. In his 2012 book, From Here to Enlightenment, he noted that personal happiness may be attained via specific behaviors and ways of […]

How to Find & Choose an Effective Therapist Recently The Harvard Health Newsletter posted some interesting questions to ask while seeking out a psychotherapist. I will add a few more details and areas of inquiry in this post. Keep in mind that these questions and inquiries do not mean you will be happy and improve […]

Alternative to Buddhism as Religion   – Simply put and Clearly Stated In case you become too serious about yourself in this life, note that there are reportedly 400 trillion subatomic vibrations every second. So be humble! And being humble is something I have had to do regarding my experience with Zen Buddhism as my […]

Mindfulness Skills and Psychotherapy Outcomes There are at least ten good reasons why mindfulness training and regular practice may improve psychotherapy outcomes. These reasons assume the training is presented by a well-trained clinician-mindfulness practitioner. Of course improved outcomes also depend upon the client’s motivation and energy to actually practice mindfulness skills on a regular basis. […]

Zen Buddhist Practices – Egolessness In our practice we often inquire, and sometimes experience, the no-self and/or egolessness. What is egolessness? Who and what do we think we are? Some say that when we die the essence but not the ego lives on into new experiences. Karma and re-birth are givens in this spiritual view. […]

Mindful Happiness Tags

COVID-19 JOURNALING SUFFERING VIPASSANA CLINICAL SUPERVISION EMPTINESS HAPPINESS DR ANTHONY QUINTILIANI MEDITATION MINDFULNESS PRACTICES THERAPY. MINDFUL HAPPINESS BREATHING MINDFULNESS TRAINING SELF MEDICATION TRAINING COMPASSION TRAUMA BUDDHISM MEDITATION PRACTICE SELF COMPASSION ELEANOR R LIEBMAN CENTER EXERCISES ANTHONY QUINTILIANI ACTIVITY SELF ESTEEM THICH NHAT HANH MINDFUL MEDITATION MINDFUL TRAINING ACTIVITIES WISE MIND BRAIN WALKING MEDITATION ENLIGHTENMENT MINDFUL ADDICTION SELF CONSCIOUSNESS VERMONT MBSR VIPASSANA MEDITATION SELF CARE PSYCHOTHERAPY PRACTICE

Mindful Categories

Mindful Happiness Pages

  • About
  • Contact
  • Dr. Anthony Quintiliani
  • Mindful Expressions Meditation CD
  • Mindful Happiness
  • Site Map

Copyright © 2022 · Mindful Happiness