Meditation
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"I venture to declare that a state of reflection is a state contrary to, nature, and that a thinking man is a depraved animal." —Discourse on Inequality (1754) by JJR |
Related e |
Featured: |
Meditation describes a state of concentrated attention on some object of thought or awareness. It usually involves turning the attention inward to a single point of reference.
In popular culture
Various forms of meditation have been described in popular culture sources. In particular, science fiction stories such as Frank Herbert's Dune have featured characters who practice one form of meditation or another. Meditation also appears as overt themes in novels such as Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums and Herman Hesse's Siddhartha.
Meditation (literary genre)
A meditation (derived from the Latin meditatio, from a verb meditari, meaning "to think, contemplate, devise, ponder") is a written work or a discourse intended to express its author's reflections, or to guide others in contemplation. Often they are an author's musings or extended thoughts on deeper philosophical or religious questions.
Examples of meditations are:
- Thomas Traherne's Centuries of Meditations
- T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets
- Meditations a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor 161–180 CE, setting forth his ideas on Stoic philosophy
- Meditations on First Philosophy by René Descartes