An AA friend said something a little startling recently. He said:

I have found that any meaningful change in myself comes about, not through trying to alter the way I behave, or applying my willpower to my situation, or by prayer, or by associating with good people, but only through meditation.

Another friend immediately challenged him. Didn't this mean, then, that working for personal change was essentially a lone task? Where was the community in this model of "change through meditation alone"? Was spiritual growth really something that only took place in the isolation of personal meditation?

The answer, of course, is No. Our Western view of meditation is that it is something that is done alone, somewhere apart from the crowd, in silence and in some sort of remoteness. And that is a valid approach to meditation. But that is not the only place that it is done. It is also done in our active daily lives, in the presence of friends and co-workers, at the stores and on the road. Of course, the kind of meditation we do there tends not to be focused meditation, but more what the Buddhists call "insight meditation" or awareness meditation -- the moment-by-moment awareness of everything that I am thinking, doing, or feeling.

Paradoxically, this is the hardest kind of meditation to do -- to concentrate, for example, on what someone is saying while simultaneously being aware of that concentration. Yet what is striking about the great religious figures is that they seemed to stress this community-based meditation more than the lone practice. For example, the Buddha speaks only once of the act of quiet meditation; the remainder of the time we see him in community with others. Jesus Christ is depicted as praying and meditating alone from time to time, but much more frequently we seem him in the company of others. Clearly, meditation practiced right in the middle of community is a valuable practice, and is as much the key to change as focused meditation done away from others in some quiet place.