Contemplative prayer

The teaching

As the contemplative prayer of the Christian, Jewish and Sufi masters teaches it.

Prayer that has grown quiet

Contemplative prayer begins in words, a psalm, a name, a short cry for mercy, and leans towards silence, where the one who prays rests in the presence of God without saying much at all. Every school of it teaches the same small movement as meditation: a word is chosen, the mind wanders, and the word is taken up again. What changes everything is that the word is said to Someone. It is not a technique for calm but a turning of the heart, and each tradition asks that it be learned inside its own faith, with a guide.

Lectio divina: the four rungs

The monks' sacred reading is a ladder of four rungs, set out by the Carthusian Guigo II. Reading takes a short passage of Scripture, a few lines only, and reads it slowly, aloud or under the breath, more than once. Meditation turns one phrase over in the mind, asking what it means and what it asks. Prayer answers it, in one's own words, to God. Contemplation is the rest that comes when words are no longer needed.

Guigo's own picture is of eating. Reading puts the food whole into the mouth, meditation chews it and breaks it up, prayer draws out its flavour, and contemplation is the sweetness itself, which gladdens and refreshes. Reading seeks, meditation finds, prayer asks, contemplation tastes. A beginner takes one Gospel passage or one psalm and gives it fifteen minutes in that order, staying longest with whatever phrase catches.

The Jesus Prayer

The prayer of the Eastern Church is a single sentence: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, to which many add, a sinner. It gathers the blind man's cry for mercy and the tax collector's 'God be merciful to me a sinner' from the Gospels, and answers the apostle's command, 'Pray without ceasing'. It is said slowly, with attention on each word, often on a prayer rope of knotted wool, one knot for each prayer: first aloud, then under the breath, then silently.

The teachers of the Philokalia speak of bringing the mind down into the heart, and Theophan the Recluse put the whole teaching into one line: to stand before God with the mind in the heart, and to go on standing before him, day and night. Many join the prayer to the breath, the first half on the in-breath and the second on the out-breath. The old writers also describe a bodily method, seated on a low stool with the head bowed and the breath held back a little; the later masters warned that it is not to be tried without a spiritual father, and the house gives it no further. The breath keeps its own pace.

In The Way of a Pilgrim a wanderer is told by his elder to say the prayer three thousand times a day, then six thousand, then twelve thousand, until it begins to say itself. That is the story of a life given to it. A beginner says it for ten minutes, or for one round of a rope of a hundred knots, and lets the count go.

The Cloud of Unknowing

The English book teaches a prayer without images. Between the soul and God there is a cloud of unknowing which no thought can pierce: God may be loved, but not grasped by the mind. So the one who prays puts every thought, even good and holy ones, beneath a cloud of forgetting, and reaches up into the darkness with love alone, 'a meek stirring of love', as the book calls it.

To carry that love it gives one short word, of one syllable if possible, such as God or love. The word is fastened to the heart so that it never leaves, and it becomes a shield and a spear: with it the soul beats upon the cloud above, and with it presses every distraction down into the cloud below. When a thought comes asking to be considered, the answer is the word. The book warns its readers not to strain, not to force the body or the head into the work, because it is done with love and not with effort.

Centering Prayer

The modern form called Centering Prayer gives the same teaching in four plain rules. Choose a sacred word of one or two syllables, such as God, Jesus, Abba, peace or love, as the sign of an intention to consent to God's presence and action within. Sit comfortably with the eyes closed, settle briefly, and bring in the word silently. When thoughts, feelings or sensations take hold, return very gently to the word. At the end, stay in silence with the eyes closed for a couple of minutes. The usual time is twenty minutes, twice a day; a beginner may start with five.

Speaking alone with God, and the shiviti

The Jewish practice taught by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov begins far from a single word and reaches the same silence. It is hitbodedut, seclusion: setting aside time each day, an hour if possible, best at night in a field or in a room alone, to talk to God in one's own language, as one talks to a close friend. Everything may be said: what was done that day, what is feared, what is wanted, what has gone wrong. Nothing is read from a book.

When no words come, Nachman taught, the person should still stay there and say even one phrase, such as Master of the world, over and over, because the longing to speak is itself a prayer. Out of that talk, at times, comes silence, which belongs to it too.

Beside it stands a quieter practice. The code of Jewish law opens, in Rabbi Moses Isserles' gloss, with the psalm 'I have set the LORD always before me', and calls it a great principle of the Torah: to keep in mind, at every moment, before whom one stands. Many synagogues hang a shiviti, a plaque bearing that verse and the divine name, before the reader's desk, and some gaze on it quietly as an aid to that awareness.

Dhikr: the remembrance

In Islam the remembrance of God is commanded in the Qur'an, which says that God remembers those who remember him and that in his remembrance hearts find rest. Dhikr is its practice: the repeating of a name of God, of the words there is no god but God, or of short phrases of praise, aloud or in the heart, often on a string of beads. Every Muslim may say the praises after the daily prayer: glory be to God, praise be to God, God is greatest, thirty-three times each.

The Sufi orders make dhikr their central work, each in its own manner, and a seeker receives it from a shaykh. Some say it aloud together in a circle, the breath and the body moving with the words. The Naqshbandi way is the silent dhikr of the heart, with its rule of awareness in every breath, so that no breath passes in forgetfulness. The aim is not a feeling but presence: that the remembrance should go on beneath everything one does.

The cautions of the masters

The traditions guard this prayer with the same few warnings. Seek no experiences: lights, warmth, sweetness and visions are not the point, and the Orthodox teachers call the hunger for them prelest, a delusion that leads a person astray. Do not force: no straining of the head, the chest or the breath. Stay humble, and pray within one's own faith, in its words and with its community. Keep a guide, a confessor, a spiritual director, a rabbi or a shaykh, who knows both the way and the one who walks it.

For one who belongs to a faith, the common form is simple. Choose a short word or phrase from that faith, sit quietly for five or ten minutes, and return to it each time a thought carries the mind away. If the silence brings distress rather than rest, stop, open the eyes and speak to someone. A reader with no faith is better served by the breath.