The Unitarian Way of Meditating


The Unitarian way of meditating started as a bit of an experiment. However over time it became more cogent. When we started leading meditation sessions we were aware we were doing it differently to others. For a start whenever we called a gathering – which we have done every week for over two years now – we found ourselves with people who had experience of yoga meditation, Christian meditation or new age meditation as well as Buddhist meditation. From the start we realised that we would not be discussing meditation in terms of religious doctrine or canons, nor did the Unitarians who found themselves leading these meditation sessions ever set themselves up as experts or as gurus. Put simply - they tended to be people with experience of meditation. 

Nevertheless we did become aware of the need to make these meditation sessions coherent and this began to happen over time. We started the sessions by explaining to people who came – not all of them were Unitarians – the nature of Unitarian Universalism here in London. We explained that these weekly sessions were gatherings of meditators most of who wanted to support their regular practice by attending in order to meditate alongside others doing the same and together to discuss issues that arose for them as meditators. However we acknowledged that we did not yet offer sufficient explanation for newcomers to meditation. We began to identify that we needed to discuss what meditation was (study of one’s mind, invoking serenity, etc.), how we meditated (posture, technique, etc.) and why we meditated (to calm down, to gain insight, etc). This we did over a period of time. Often we found ourselves having to explain how to meditate to complete newcomers. At times this created difficulties, since it can be hard to balance the needs of complete newcomers against those of regular meditators. At this point we decided to have a follow up discussion of ten to fifteen minutes after each meditation session. These discussions were very interesting because of the diverse experience and background of the meditators. Discussion tended to keep our attitudes fresh and, as we tend to forget things, the subtle balance of factors helped us sharpen, or indeed resharpen, our interest in the practice of meditation. 

Most recently we invited Mark Leonard to speak about meditation. Mark has done a lot of meditation teaching in the National Health Service and this included teaching clinical psychiatrists so that his presentation was couched in terms of evidence and identifiable outcomes rather than by resorting to the authority of secret scriptures and canon written in long dead languages. This was rather refreshing and everyone seemed to come away inspired by his workshop session. Personally I found this really very refreshing. I had grown tired and sceptical of Buddhists reverting to hierarchical and clichéd attitudes. Mark discussed meditation in ways that meant we were discussing what was happening rather than what was meant to be happening. Every individual is being invited to investigate meditation in order to have their own unique experience and nobody is foisting themselves onto anyone else as a spiritually superior person. In that meeting I realised that we had actually set out to cultivate a Unitarian way to mediate - and little by little that is what we are doing.

Saul Deason