Charles Sanders Peirce's philosophy, largely overlooked by theologians and scholars of religion, offers valuable resources for understanding how attention transforms consciousness and shapes meditative practices. This essay examines Peirce's scattered remarks on the "logic of meditation" in relation to his semiotic theory and theory of inquiry. The author argues that meditative practices display a logic consistent with Peirce's descriptions, and evaluates the significance of these ideas for contemporary philosophers of religion seeking to understand meditation's diverse forms and purposes.
Practices of meditation and spiritual combat in martial arts enhance the capacity to control attention, which is morally significant because deliberate behavior—action performed with careful attention—is what makes ethical evaluation possible. Paying attention is itself a kind of doing that can be done well or poorly. Drawing on Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, William James, and Charles Peirce, this essay explores the relationship between martial spirituality and an ethics of attention, arguing that training attention is a foundation for ethical life and resistance to forces that capture it.