About 20 years ago I became interested in Buddhism while in college for 2 reasons:

1) I needed to find a higher power to help me get sober from alcohol and I began with findings in science such as physics, chemistry, and quantum mechanics, but I needed to go deeper into trying to figure out what God was like, so I started researching Buddhism and the other Eastern religions.

2) Back then my mind was a mess. I had a lot of different things causing anxiety and I wanted a way to beat that, to be calm in any situation, and also I was looking for a way to have better focus for my studies.

I did find that over time practicing mindfulness and non-attachment helped to improve various sources of anxiety. Practicing having effortless effort (mentioned in the last post) helped me to be better task oriented, stop overthinking tasks, and just do them, thus becoming more efficient. I’m not sure how much it helped with procrastination, but it may have.

I practiced mainly transcendental Meditation (TM), which is a meditation technique that aims to achieve a state of restful alertness, where the mind is quiet but the body is relaxed and wide awake. The goal of TM is to guide thoughts away from the mind and back towards a mantra, emptiness, or detachment. Mantras are simply positive ideas that one wants to focus on and develop. While it's not possible to completely empty the mind during meditation, the goal is to train the mind to not engage with every thought that arises. Doing this repeatedly over time can retrain the mind to focus more on what you want and less on what you don’t want.

The problem is that practicing TM can be very frustrating, especially at the start, because our minds never want to shut off. But our minds can be compared to that of an untrained animal, like a dog. When you call an untrained dog to you it does not want to consistently obey you. But if you keep working with it over time you can train it to consistently do that and many other tasks. Training dogs can take a lot of time and patience. I definitely have found it to be true that TM is basically the same way. It can take a lot of work and is especially hard at the start, but over time it can really pay off in terms of improved focus and concentration.

Because of the difficulty and time consumption of TM, over time I started using mantras more, because mantras help to reprogram your mind to be however you want to be. A mantra can be a phrase or word that you repeat over and over in order to get it deeply ingrained into you. For example, you can push away anxiety and gain courage by using this approach:

(1) Make a list of all the major things that trigger anxiety. (2) Write down things that you can say that are the opposite of those anxieties. (3) Every day speak only what you want to see happen and do your best to not let yourself say self-defeating things.

For example, if my fear is of public speaking, I would not let myself say that I am afraid to speak in public. Instead, I would start saying things like: “I cannot wait until I can speak in public. I feel comfortable and relaxed doing it. Ideas flow smoothly when I do and people like to hear what I have to say.” By saying these things over and over (like a mantra) I can reprogram my mind to be relaxed and comfortable when it comes time to speak in public. You can use this approach to combat anxiety, depression, discouragement, and many other things and you can improve just about any situation in life! It is a very powerful technique.

Because I saw mantras as a shortcut to “making myself”, over time I stopped doing TM and focused more on meditating on different mantras to become the person that I wanted to become. In addition to focusing more on positive things (or mantras), I would also spend time meditating on a certain mantra, such as having unconditional love. I found that very helpful to improve my wellbeing and how I treated others.

By doing the above things, I gained improved focus and wellbeing, and improved confidence in every challenge that I faced. I still recommend these tools to many people that I see to this day.

Now let’s compare the things I just mentioned above to what the Bible says.

Psalm 1:2-3 (NLT) states,

[Those who] delight in the law [or word] of the Lord,

meditating on it day and night.

They are like trees planted along the riverbank,

bearing fruit each season.

Their leaves never wither,

and they prosper in all they do.

So the Bible tells us to meditate on God’s words and then we will bear much fruit, not wither, and will prosper in all we do. Doesn’t it make sense that if a person wants to prosper they should know what God has to say, meditate on it, and do it? For those who study and follow the Bible, there is great comfort and encouragement in knowing and acting on what God has to say. When we focus on His words, like a mantra, they get ingrained into us – but His words carry an even greater potential to change us for the better!

Romans 12:2 (NLT) states, Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think [renewing your mind]. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

Renewing your mind is a Christian term that refers to replacing unhealthy thought patterns with godly ones. The goal is to be transformed from the inside out, and to be able to understand God's will for your life.

So God tells us not to conform to what others are doing, but change what we think about by knowing His will for us (what the Bible says) and saturating our minds with that – which is good and pleasing and perfect. The Bible is full of scriptures to help fight fear (anxiety), discouragement, and depression. Those things plague everyone to some degree. Meditation helped me not think so much about anxieties and other unwanted negative thoughts, but it never helped stop them.

On the other hand, God’s word is alive, and meditating on scripture and getting it deep into me has been amazing for my mental health. When trouble of any kind comes around, I want the first thing that comes to mind to be scripture because that gives me peace, encouragement, and it increases my faith in God, which allows Him to do powerful works in me and through me.

Going a step further along these lines, 2 Corinthians 10:5 (ESV) says, We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ

That scripture perfectly encapsulates the concept of mindfulness! When I am mindful of every thought and feeling I have, and decide not to follow them but instead to ask myself what God would have to say about them, then I am filled with His words and His hope, peace, encouragement, and power to change myself and even the circumstances around me.

Smith Wigglesworth famously said, “I am not moved by what I see. I am not moved by what I feel. I am moved by what I believe.” Unfortunately many Christians are moved by their feelings, and do not take them captive to Christ. Feelings are temporary – it is our beliefs that matter the most. Jesus said that “All things are possible for one who believes” (Mark 9:23 ESV). Also, let’s not forget that the power of the placebo effect is great evidence of the power of belief.

There are so many other great scriptures that could be used in this post, but let’s look at just one more that perfectly illustrates the wisdom of God’s word and how it relates to the power of positive thinking (and mantras):

Philippians 4:8 (NASB) Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Hello and welcome back! In this post we will compare and contrast the approach that Buddhism takes to achieve mindfulness and meditation with the approach that Christianity takes to achieve that. This will be challenging to do in a short blog post, but I will try to just hit the highlights.

Buddhism vs. Christianity - Part 3