The Eastern form of meditation, which will be described below, is no doubt the prevailing understanding of meditation in the world today. The Eastern idolatrous religions have not just influenced the secular culture at large in their understanding of what it means to meditate, but also the modern church’s understanding as well. It is just as Donald Whitney astutely observes, “Even among believers, the practices of meditation is often more closely associated with yoga, transcendental meditation, relaxation therapy, or the New Age Movement.”1 Joel Beeke and Mark Jones rightly lament the sad reality meditation is far more widely associated with idolatrous practices rather than as a vital Christian spiritual discipline.
One hindrance to growth among Christians today is our failure to cultivate spiritual knowledge. We fail to give enough time to prayer and Bible-reading, and we have abandoned the practice of meditation. How tragic that the very word meditation, once regarded as a core discipline of Christianity and “a crucial preparation for and adjunct to the work of prayer,” is now associate with unbiblical “New Age” spirituality.2
Because of how vital the discipline of meditation is to the life of the believer, this is a real concern for the modern church. Christians have yielded too much ground to unbiblical forms of meditation that have been influenced by idolatrous practices, likely out of an ignorance of what biblical meditation actually is. But as with all doctrines and practices of the Church we must, as Paul told Timothy, “Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers,” (1 Tim. 4:15-16). We begin by highlighting the meditative practices of Eastern religion.
Eastern Religious Meditation
According to the Pew Research Center, the two largest Eastern religions in the world in 2020 were Hinduism with 1. 3 billion adherents and Buddhism with 0.3 billion followers.3 Of those two religions there are a countless number of meditative practices between them due to their polytheistic and pantheistic natures, respectively. It is outside of the scope of this article to treat and compare every single one of those practices. However, we will look at some common practices and the stated goal of these practices to give us a general understanding of Eastern meditation. If the roots of a tree are rotten, the whole tree and its fruit will be rotten as well.
Much like how Christian meditation is often summarized as the filling up of the mind with Scripture, Eastern meditation is often summarized as the emptying of the mind. In other words, the goal of meditation would be to get into a place where you are not thinking of anything at all. However, proponents and practitioners of Eastern meditation argue against such a definition, claiming that the goal is not necessarily to empty the mind of all thoughts, but to achieve a detachment from thought.
For example, Nicholas Buxton, a contemporary Anglican priest with a PhD in Buddhist philosophy, says that “Meditation is not about the absence of thoughts, but a particular kind of detachment from them, a letting go that is achieved by keeping our attention anchored to a single object.”4 Similarly, William Johnston (1925-2010), a Jesuit priest and Zen meditation advocate, writes of the principles of Zen meditation: “One must be detached from everything, even from oneself… from the very process of thinking, from the images and ideas and conceptualization that are so dear to Western man. And through this detachment one is introduced to a deep and beautiful realm of psychic life.”5 While this sounds mystical, what does it look like in practice?
Later in his book, as he describes a class he taught for the purpose of introducing his fellow Catholics to Zen, Johnston writes that his goal was to, “introduce them to a meditation that would be without thought, without images, without desire, in interior unification and peace.”6 In practice, the teaching session went this way: “So we sat in the university chapel, facing the wall and thinking about nothing.”7 Likewise, Buxton, in his instructions for how to meditate which merely includes repeating a mantra over and over again and breathing, states,
As thoughts arise—which they will—do not try to suppress them, as this only generates more thoughts. Simply try not to get caught up in them… Whenever you become aware that your mind has drifted away from here and now, gently let that thought go.8
Despite their protestation otherwise, it would seem that in Eastern meditation the intent of meditating is to empty the mind of all thoughts. This is the exact opposite of the goal of biblical meditation. The goal in biblical meditation is not to merely fill up the mind with random and subjective thoughts, but to focus the mind and one’s thinking on biblical truth. At this fundamental level of what occurs during meditation we can already see a cavernous divide between the Eastern religious practices and how God defines meditation. This fissure is going to get only wider as we now look why those who practice Eastern meditation are supposed to empty their minds.
The Ultimate Goal of Eastern Meditation
As I made the case that describing Christian meditation as the filling up of the mind of Scripture is too simplistic because it masks the ultimate goal of Christian meditation, we must say the same for Eastern meditation. The penultimate goal of Eastern meditation is to empty, or detach, oneself from their thoughts. However, that is not the ultimate goal of meditation. The ultimate goal of Eastern meditation is, for all intents and purposes, idolatry. The one meditating in the Eastern traditions seeks to empty their mind for the purpose of either analyzing and interpreting reality according to their own subjective standard,9 to make themselves out to be God,10 to worship another god,11 or some combination of the above.
For example, Bradford Smith, writing in 1963 in favor of a Buddhist-flavored Quaker style of contemplative meditation, gives a very subjective and man-centered explanation for how to find God through meditation.
There is only one God who lives, and that is the one you find within. We have a curious habit of assuming that God is still what He was to us in the first grade at Sunday school. We think we outgrow him. Instead, we carry our first-grade concept along with us into maturity and fail to outgrow that. Then we blame God. The way to find Him is through meditation—this is the only way. His word, speaking through your mind. No matter what church you follow or do not follow, you believe in something. All too probably, you have not stopped long enough or probed deep enough to see what it is. So you have fallen short of realizing yourself as a person.12
Smith does not ground his meditation in Scripture but rather in the traditions of other religions. Because of this starting point, his goal is not to think God’s thoughts after him or to be more like Christ, but to justify his own fallen worldview and make himself feel better. This is the direct result of trying to merge biblical Christianity with idolatrous religion: all you get in the end is idolatry.
Recognizing this truth gives us the answer as to whether or not Eastern meditative practices can be redeemed and something that Christians have the freedom in Christ to participate in. The answer is no. As God tells Israel concerning himself at the end of Hosea’s prophecy, “What have I to do with idols?” (Hos. 14:8). The ultimate goal of the Eastern meditative practices is not the worship of the one true God and conformity to Christ. Though William Johnston astutely observed that “If Christian Zen is to be Christian and not simply Zen, it must be somehow built on the Scriptures,” he immediately jettisons the true Christ and the Scriptures by continuing, “But I ask myself if through Zen we may not find a new approach to Christ, an approach that is less dualistic and more Oriental.”13 Ironically in the same breath that he tries to cover his idolatrous practice with a veneer of Christ he immediately exposes it as the idolatry it is.
As Smith’s goal was not Christocentric, neither was Johnston’s. Speaking like a true Catholic, in his book he admits that the only reason he has not completely laid aside his Christian tradition for Buddhist tradition is because of his love, not for Christ or His Word, but for his tradition.14 He goes on to say that outside of his own fascination and love for Zen, the reason he has been so zealous for the Catholic Church to welcome and incorporate Buddhist Zen meditation is because he believes it will bring more people back to the Catholic Church.15
In that sense, Johnston has more in common with the seeker-sensitive movement than biblical Christianity. Like the proponents of the seeker-sensitive model, Johnston’s goal is not biblical fidelity, an honoring of Christ, or saving the lost, but just a numbers game. All of these examples prove that when the Scriptures are not the foundation of one’s meditation, you have abandoned true meditation and drifted off into a religion and Christ of your own making.
After listing mantra chanting and shamanic visualization among other idolatrous practices as legitimate methods of meditation, Buxton claims that the method of one’s meditation is not important; what is important is one’s motivation for meditating.16 Nevertheless, he has to contend with what Paul taught the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 6:14-16, “What fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols?” Why would Christians go to and trust the word of idols and unredeemed men over the Word of the Living God?
Quaker Contemplative Meditation
Before we move onto to the Western practice of “mindfulness”—a form of meditation that has grown in popularity in the recent decades—it would be pertinent here to address the Quaker contemplative form of Christian meditation that is prominently promoted in Richard Foster’s book Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth. The reason I am addressing it here in this section on Eastern meditation practices is because it is eerily similar to the Eastern practices in its method and subjectivity. This isn’t too surprising as the Quaker contemplative tradition seems to have a strong connection to the medieval Catholic mystics who themselves may have been influenced by Buddhism.17
In fact, in his treatment on meditation, Foster repeatedly quotes and promotes the teaching of Thomas Merton (1915-1968) who was a Twentieth Century Catholic mystic who promoted interfaith understanding, particularly with Eastern religions.18 Though Foster says that his goal is to hear God’s voice, he has imbibed far too much Eastern thought into his meditative practices.19 For instance, Foster rightly notes that the goal of Eastern meditation is to detach oneself from the world. He then goes on to say that Christian meditation goes beyond detachment to attachment to God.20
Though Foster’s use of detachment is shaky, depending on what he means that Christians are to detach themselves from the world, it would seem his intention is at least better than those who have completely given themselves over to Eastern religious practices. However, without calling the genuineness of Foster’s faith into question, good intentions do not always lead to right action. Foster’s meditative practices are just as dangerous as the full-blown Eastern practices because both are built on the sandy foundation of subjectivity and not on the objective Word of God. Foster claims that meditation is to be done with an open Bible, thus giving the appearance of being guided by the Scriptures, but his description of meditation contradicts this.
We are seeking to think God’s thoughts after him, to delight in his presence, to desire his truth and his way. And the more we live in this way, the more God utilizes our imagination for his good purposes. In fact, the common experience of those who walk with God is one of being given images of what can be. Often in praying for people I am given a picture of their condition, and when I share that picture with them, there will be a deep inner sigh, or they will begin weeping. Later they will ask, ‘How did you know?’ Well, I didn’t know, I just saw it.21
Foster says he desires to think God’s thoughts after him and pursue God’s truth. This sounds identical to what we discovered in our biblical survey. However, Foster goes about thinking God’s thoughts after him, not through a study and deep thinking on the Word, but through subjective images he claims to receive from God. He goes on to say that while the study of Scripture focuses on exegesis, meditating on the Scripture is making the Scriptures personal and not a time for technical studies or analysis.22
In another example, appealing to the tradition of the contemplatives of the Middle Ages and of the Quakers, he says that meditation is, “a time to become still, to enter into the recreating silence, to allow the fragmentation of our minds to become centered.”23 Again, this has more in common with Buddhist Zen meditation than it does with the meditative practices of David and Paul. This kind of meditation, though having the veneer of biblical fidelity and though not being brazenly idolatrous, is dangerous because it does not employ the proper guardrails of the objective Word of God to restrain and transform the fallen mind. It cannot, therefore, be considered Christian meditation, and should be avoided.
Mindfulness
The final competing prominent teaching on meditation that we will consider is the psychological practice of mindfulness. Though we will see that it shares much in common with Eastern meditative practices, the Western practice of mindfulness does not have a religious background. In addition, unlike Eastern meditation’s goal of emptying the mind, mindfulness is all about thinking. Due to these two facets of mindfulness, the Christian might be tempted to think that mindfulness is a practice akin to true meditation, and something that is permissible in Christ to practice. However, as we explore the roots and practice of mindfulness, it will become clear that while there are some aspects of mindfulness a Christian may affirm, the problems and dangers outweigh benefits. In the final analysis, we will see that mindfulness is not the same thing as biblical meditation.
Dr. Ellen J. Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard, wrote the book on the modern mindfulness. In it she details what mindfulness is and what it looks like in practice. Mindfulness is the opposite of mindlessness, which is to live rigidly in the world according to the preconceived rules without question to the point that the person is not really questioning or thinking about his or her actions, thoughts, or words.24 Mindfulness, in contrast, is not performing an action merely because you’ve always done it, or thinking about something in a particular way because that’s what you were taught and how you have always thought. Rather, mindfulness is creating new categories and exploring why you think a certain way about something or re-framing something in your mind to think about a thing differently.25
It is wholly right to consider your motivations for why you do something, especially worship, so that we are doing what we do out of love for God and others rather than merely doing things out of rote tradition or selfish motives. Likewise, as we’ve seen in our survey of the New Testament texts, Christians are to think about what is true and right. Christians are to be mindful in the regular sense of the word. However, Dr. Langer does not have either of those aims in mind when she speaks of mindlessness and mindfulness. While mindfulness is not rooted in the Eastern religions, it does have a religious origin: Naturalism. The mindfulness movement is founded on a naturalistic worldview. Mindlessness, which is always bad, is the unquestioning obedience to any law, which includes God’s law. Langer explains that “to be mindless is to be trapped in a rigid world in which certain creatures always belong to the Emperor, Christianity is always good, certain people are forever untouchable, and doors are only doors.” 26
The basis of mindfulness then, much like Eastern meditation, is the subjective opinions of the one meditating or practicing mindfulness. A key component of being mindful, then, is critically questioning anything and everything that you have been taught. As a result, because there is no objective standard in the mindfulness school of thinking, any behavior or pattern of thinking, no matter how sinful it is, can be looked at in another way and cast into a positive light.27
The dangers of mindfulness are just the same as the previous meditative practices explored above. Like those practices, it is a wholly man-centered practice aimed at the worship of self. If you were being convicted over your sin and starting to see it as wicked and that which must be repented of, proponents of mindful thinking would encourage you to create new categories of right and wrong so that you can change your guilty feelings into positive ones.28 Like the Eastern forms of meditation and the Quaker contemplative tradition, mindfulness must be rejected by the Christian. Instead, follow the example of the Puritans who practiced meditation according to the Scriptures.
In our next and final article, we will consider the Puritan’s positive example of biblical meditation.
NOTES
1Donald Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1991), 47.
2Joel Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012), 889.
3“How the Global Religious Landscape Changed from 2010 to 2020,” Pew Research Center, accessed October 25, 2025, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/06/09/how-the-global-religious-landscape-changed-from-2010-to-2020/
4Nicholas, Buxton, The Wilderness Within: Meditation and the Modern Life (Norwich: Canterbury Press. 2014.), 99.
5William Johnston, Christian Zen (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1971), 17.
6Johnston, Christian Zen, 30.
7Johnston, Christian Zen, 31.
8Buxton, The Wilderness Within, xiv.
9Bradford Smith, Meditation: The Inward Art (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1963), 12.
10Johnston, Christian Zen, 18.
11Bradford, Meditation: The Inward Art, 37-38.
12Bradford, Meditation: The Inward Art, 17.
13Johnston, Christian Zen, 48.
14Johnston, Christian Zen, 43.
15Johnston, Christian Zen, 46.
16Buxton, The Wilderness Within, 7.
17Johnston, William Johnston, 17.
18“Thomas Merton’s Life And Work,” The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University, accessed October 25, 2025, https://merton.org/chrono.aspx
19Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth (London: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., 1980), 21.
20Foster, Celebration of Discipline, 25.
21Foster, Celebration of Discipline, 30.
22Foster, Celebration of Discipline, 33.
23Foster, Celebration of Discipline, 35.
24Ellen J. Langer, Mindfulness (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2014), 13-14.
25Langer, Mindfulness, xx.
26Langer, Mindfulness, 14.
27Langer, Mindfulness, 72-73.
28Langer, Mindfulness, 65.
