“Easy and Sweet”: Thomas Traherne’s Method of Meditation
O. Anderson
Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies September 26, 2019 DOI: 10.1353/cjm.2019.0000 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Meditation |
| Key points | Argues that Thomas Traherne reformed traditional meditative practices of humiliation, scriptural engagement, and solitude in favor of self-love, creativity, and community, framing meditation as joyful communication with God rather than an agonizing search. The manuscript of the Centuries of Meditation is presented as displaying these theories in practice and illuminating seventeenth-century manuscript culture. |
Abstract
Abstract:This article links Thomas Traherne’s method of meditation to the precarious art of “thinking Well.” Traherne rejects or reforms historical and contemporary meditative practices of humiliation, scriptural engagement, and solitude, in favor of self-love, personal creativity, and community. Meditation is proven to be “Easy and Sweet” because good thoughts are “Prepard” and “inlaid” in the soul by God. Meditation becomes not an agonizing search for God, but a joyful communication with him. The article concludes with a revealing exposition of Traherne’s manuscript of the Centuries of Meditation (housed in the Bodleian Library), which displays the author’s meditative theories in practice and offers insight into seventeenth-century manuscript culture.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition. | 2004 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mechanisms of mindfulness | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness | 2012 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |