Do you pray or meditate? Here's how these spiritual practices are different and similar

Ron Lee
·1 min read

A friend of mine recently told me of a significant life altering health condition they were experiencing.

While we were discussing this, I asked if they wanted to work on meditation or go on a meditation retreat with me as they participated in a mindfulness and meditation course I facilitated in the past.

They responded, “I pray in the morning and I think of it as a form of meditation.” I left it at, “If it brings you peace, that’s great.”

Julie McPeak, 51, practices in her kitchen on a drum paid at her home on Tuesday, April 6, 2021 in Nashville, Tenn. "COVID presented the perfect opportunity," says McPeak an attorney who started drum lessons during the pandemic. "It's very relaxing and sort of meditative to play," she went onto say.
Julie McPeak, 51, practices in her kitchen on a drum paid at her home on Tuesday, April 6, 2021 in Nashville, Tenn. "COVID presented the perfect opportunity," says McPeak an attorney who started drum lessons during the pandemic. "It's very relaxing and sort of meditative to play," she went onto say.

Since then, I’ve contemplated how prayer and meditation may be similar and how they may be different.

Most prayer, in my experience, is somewhat different than meditation. Prayer typically involves looking outwards to a god or other supernatural power. Meditation typically involves looking inward, often with a focus on the breath or another focus object.

Mayoral candidates Bill Purcell, left, and Richard Fulton, right, join hands with Ilyas Muhammad, Imam of Muslim American Community Center, second from left, and Willie Russell, pastor of Mt. Calvary Baptist Church of Madison, during a prayer circle after the Interdenominational Ministers Fellowship discussion at Jefferson Street Missionary Baptist Church on March 10, 1999.

If prayer involves attachment to an event in the past or to an anticipated future, it differs from a typical meditation which brings one into the present moment without such attachments.

But, when prayer is performed as a mantra or otherwise brings one into the present moment and invokes peace, joy, equanimity, etc., it overlaps with meditation.

The “fruits of the spirit” in Christianity include love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Whether we experience these via prayer or meditation, as long as we experience and cultivate these, we will be better off within and without.

Ron Lee, Brentwood 37027

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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Prayer and meditation: Know how these practices differ and overlap