Is Quaker Worship Meditation?

Can you meditate in Quaker meeting for worship? According to these 5 Friends, having a meditation practice can be fine, even helpful. But it shouldn’t end there.

Is QuakerSpeak worth $1 a video?

Jon Watts

Jon Watts launched and directed the QuakerSpeak project for its first 6 seasons. Keep up to date with Jon’s work at his website.

4 thoughts on “Is Quaker Worship Meditation?

  1. An educational QuakerSpeak for new attenders who seek guidance as to what’s going on in Quaker Meeting for Worship

  2. This is a helpful QuakerSpeak because new attenders will often perceive that Meeting for Worship is a lot of folks meditating individually or as a group. I am amazed at how much I learned in a short time. Often the more powerful part of Quaker worship happens when those there are present to both the divine and to each other and the separate self dissolves. Zen practitioners know this experience as well as big mind, an experience beyond concepts. So as some of the folks in the video said- there is some overlap.

  3. Simply illuminating. For someone new to the Quaker way it does succinctly point out the difference between Vipassana (or other Buddhist) meditation and Meeting for Worship. I think this is important because those not familiar with the Quaker way may be lost as to what to expect.

  4. I feel no conflict in studying Buddhism, meditating for 11 years, and attending Meetings for Worship every Sunday for the last 7. Everything can be seen as mediation, knitting, folding clothes, driving a car, or sitting in silence.

    Advanced mediation is not disturbed by anything, including vocal ministry; all of our senses, hearing, seeing, and awareness, become alive in Meeting. Meditation can include contemplation, which one can bring to Meeting, on say gratitude, forgiveness, or love of God.

    On the other hand, Non-meditation at Meeting is when we sit sleepy, or our mind is stolen by unconscious discursive thinking and worry.

    I see the question as different labels with the same result—helping our mind feel our light, our love, and seeing it in others.

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