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Meditation
1 Meditation is an indirect method of looking for the absolute: we speak of the absolute instead of to the absolute. It is an intellectual attitude of reflection where man makes room for an affecting presence without a specific request.
2 The wisdom tradition is closely related to modern man’s search for the absolute: erudite works written by and for scholars draw from rich experience and a human dimension and abstract formalization is given to very concrete perceptions.
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Responses to Suffering
3 Mesopotamian meditation occasionally reflects on genuine moments of religious experience (such as doubt and philosophical responses to suffering).
4 Biblical texts are much more firmly anchored in an underlying religiosity. The reason for suffering recedes in the shadows before the absolute referentiality of God. The solution is not conceptual, but found in the reality of this presence.
5 It is unclear whether the tradition of meditation was practiced outside the circle of the elite; there are some lines in the Psalms that suggest that in some families there may have been some time reserved for meditation outside the temple.
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The Canon
6 The development of a canon of texts is not found in Mesopotamia and can be attributed to the temple-related scribal class in the Biblical world and is perhaps due to the need for texts that could be memorized for private meditation.