Other forms: meditations
Meditation is quiet focused attention practised to calm the mind. Daily meditation, a meditation practice, guided meditation.
It covers many traditions with different aims — concentration on the breath, on a word, on nothing — and clinical trials support modest benefits for anxiety and blood pressure. Ten minutes a day is the usual starting advice. The other sense is a piece of extended reflective writing: Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius. Note meditate; and that mindfulness is one particular modern branch of it.
1nounmeditationQuiet focused attention practised to calm the mind.
“He sat cross-legged on the floor with his eyes closed, lost in meditation.”
2nounextendedA piece of extended reflective writing.
“The book is a long meditation on grief and memory.”
meditation is a practice of attention.
Latin meditari means to think over or consider, from a root meaning to measure. Medicine, modest and moderate come from the same measuring.
Proto-Indo-European
*med- — to measure, limit, consider, advise
Latin
meditatio
Old French
meditacion
English, today
meditation
Built from
From Old French meditacion, from Latin meditatio, from meditatus, the past participle of meditārī (“to meditate, to think over, consider”), itself from Proto-Indo-European med- (“to measure, limit, consider, advise”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Belief & Ritual