What's the difference in meditating and contemplating?

Question

Psi... Someone once told me that in contemplation..you take one word and think about it a long time...or think "on" it.

Answer 1

In contemplation you are generally focusing on something.  In meditation (at least the kind I practice in the yoga class at my health club) you try to unfocus and empty your mind.  There are also specific postures for meditation, classicly sitting in lotus or lying in corpse pose.

Answer 2

In general meditation you clear y our mind to enter a clear state of consciousness, and in contemplating you focus on a particular thing :) There is some meditations where you have a goal though, such as crystal meditations where you goal is to connect with the consciousness of the crystal you are holding :) I really like that kind of meditation :)

                  Hope it helped :)

                        Namaste

Answer 3

Contemplating is just turning over an idea in your head.  You know, considering it.  Meditation can be similar, but it's usually practiced as more of a disciplined spiritual or religious mental exercise.

Answer 4

Meditating literally means - to think upon.  Contemplating is a wool gathering type of consciousness that is the same type of phenomena.

Answer 5

Technically meditating (link below) could be called an altered state of consciousness. There is a great deal of work being done studying meditation with brain imaging technologies.

One of the findings is that the area of the brain that is responsible for your sense of self (feeling you are a separate individual) is less activated in meditating monks which would explain the feeling of connected to all or being part of the universe and God that religions have described for thousands for years.

On the other hand contemplation (link below) is simply thinking something over (like when your mother and teacher said "now think about what you have done").

However, when it is used in a religious sense "contemplate the nature of God" it is often just another word for meditation.

Psi

Answer 6

Meditaion is an clearing of the mind of surface thoughts.

Contemplating is clearing of the mind except for one idea or thought.

Similar in some ways but not quite the same.