Former Archbishop of Canterbury Practices Buddhist/Catholic Meditation

In a recent interview, Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, said that he practices a combination of Buddhist/Catholic/Orthodox meditation practices. Each morning he repeats the same prayer while performing breathing exercises. Called the “Jesus Prayer,” it consists of the vain repetition of the words, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.” He said that “exposure to and engagement with the Buddhist world in particular has made me aware of practices not unlike the ‘Jesus Prayer’ and introduced me to disciplines that further enforce the stillness and physical focus that the prayer entails” (“Rowan Williams: How Buddhism Helps Me Pray,” The Telegraph, London, July 2, 2014). He says the practice helps him detach himself from “distracted, wandering images and thoughts.” Practicing mental imagining techniques, he pictures the human body as a cave through which his breath passes. He says that practitioners of these techniques can achieve “advanced states” and become aware of an “unbroken inner light.” Unscriptural contemplative practices such as the Jesus Prayer, visualizing prayer, breath prayer, and centering prayer are exceedingly dangerous. Many who practice these things end up believing in a pagan concept of God such as pantheism (God is everything) and panentheism (God is in everything). Through these practices people typically become increasingly ecumenical and interfaith in thinking. Contemplative prayer is a major building block of the end-time, one-world “church.” For more on this see the book Contemplative Mysticism which is available in print and eBook editions from Way of Life Literature.

(Friday Church News Notes, July 25, 2014, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

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