{"id":2968,"date":"2020-07-25T14:19:43","date_gmt":"2020-07-25T14:19:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/07\/25\/thought-prayer-meditation\/"},"modified":"2020-07-25T14:19:43","modified_gmt":"2020-07-25T14:19:43","slug":"thought-prayer-meditation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/07\/25\/thought-prayer-meditation\/","title":{"rendered":"Thought, Prayer, Meditation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">&quot;Prayer is when night descends on thought.&quot; (Alain, as quoted by Albert Camus in <em>The Myth of Sisyphus<\/em>.) Knowing Alain, he must have intended his aphorism as a denigration of prayer. I see it the other way around. We cannot think our way out of our predicament; thinking merely allows us to map the terrain and discover the impasses.&#0160; It is merely a means of &quot;consolidating our perplexities.&quot; (E. Cioran). It is the failure of thinking that leads us to pray, and the limitations of prayer that lead us to meditate&#0160; and wait, like Weil, in silence.&#0160; (Curious it is that Simone Weil was a student of Alain.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\">So I say: Prayer is when night descends on thought, and meditation is when night descends on (discursive) prayer.&#0160; But all three are needed for a complete human life. Each of us should aspire to be a thinker, a believer, and a mystic with triple citizenship in Athens, Jerusalem, and Benares.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 12pt;\"> <a class=\"asset-img-link\" href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c0263e9586862200b-pi\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Rodin\" class=\"asset  asset-image at-xid-6a010535ce1cf6970c0263e9586862200b img-responsive\" src=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c0263e9586862200b-320wi\" title=\"Rodin\" \/> <\/a><a class=\"asset-img-link\" href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c0263e958687d200b-pi\" style=\"float: right;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Buddha statue\" class=\"asset  asset-image at-xid-6a010535ce1cf6970c0263e958687d200b img-responsive\" src=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c0263e958687d200b-320wi\" style=\"margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px;\" title=\"Buddha statue\" \/><\/a> <a class=\"asset-img-link\" href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c0263ec2a06e1200c-pi\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Genuflection\" class=\"asset  asset-image at-xid-6a010535ce1cf6970c0263ec2a06e1200c img-responsive\" src=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/.a\/6a010535ce1cf6970c0263ec2a06e1200c-320wi\" style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" title=\"Genuflection\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&quot;Prayer is when night descends on thought.&quot; (Alain, as quoted by Albert Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus.) Knowing Alain, he must have intended his aphorism as a denigration of prayer. I see it the other way around. We cannot think our way out of our predicament; thinking merely allows us to map the terrain &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/07\/25\/thought-prayer-meditation\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Thought, Prayer, Meditation&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437,406,399,331,41,139,179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alain","category-art-of-life","category-athens-and-benares","category-athens-and-jerusalem","category-mysticism","category-religion","category-weil-simone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}