Muslim Meditations
The following article is from "Meditation." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 2 May 2009, 10:30 UTC. 6 May 2009
A Muslim is obliged to pray at least five times a day: once before sunrise; at noon; once in the afternoon; at sunset and once at night. During prayer he or she is to focus and meditate on God by reciting the Qur'an and engaging in dhikr, in order to reaffirm and strengthen the bond between creator and creation. This has the effect of guiding the soul to truth. Such meditation is intended to help maintain a feeling of spiritual peace, in the face of whatever challenges work, social or family life may present.
The five daily acts of peaceful prayer are to serve as a template and inspiration for conduct during the rest of the day, transforming it, ideally, into one single and sustained meditation: even sleep is to be regarded as but another phase of that sustained meditation.
Meditative quiescence is said to have a quality of healing, and of enhancing, as contemporary terminology would have it, creativity. The prophet Muhammad spent sustained periods in contemplation and meditation. It was during one such period that the Prophet began to receive the revelations of the Qur'an.
Styles, or schools, of meditation in the Muslim tradition include etff:
- Tafakkur or tadabbur, literally means reflection upon the universe: this is considered to permit access to a form of cognitive and emotional development that can emanate only from the higher level, i.e. from God. The sensation of receiving divine inspiration awakens and liberates both heart and intellect, permitting such inner growth that the apparently mundane actually takes on the quality of the infinite. Muslim teachings embrace life as a test of one's submission to God.
- Meditation in the Sufi traditions is largely based on a spectrum of mystical exercises, varying from one lineage to another. Such techniques, particularly the more audacious, can be, and often have been down the ages, a source of controversy among scholars. One broad group of ulema, followers of the great Al-Ghazzali, for example, have in general been open to such techniques and forms of devotion, while another such group, those who concur with the prodigious Ibn Taymiya, reject and generally condemn such procedures as species of bid'ah (Arabic: بدعة) or mere innovation.
Numerous Sufi traditions place emphasis upon a meditative procedure similar in its cognitive aspect to one of the two principal approaches to be found in the Buddhist traditions: that of the concentration technique, involving high-intensity and sharply focused introspection. In the Oveyssi-Shahmaghsoudi Sufi order, for example, this is particularly evident, where muraqaba takes the form of tamarkoz, the latter being a Persian term that means concentration.