"I am so busy today that...I am going to meditate for two hours instead of one."
- Mahatma Gandhi
Meditation is a practice where an individual trains her attention to achieve a clear, calm and stable state of mind. The Dalai Lama believes that meditation and prayer have similar benefits. However, my reading of the subject suggests that there are two differences between meditation and prayer. Firstly, meditation is, in general, a more advanced form of concentrating and focusing the mind than prayer. Secondly, whilst prayer has as its focus either a god or a deity, meditation - especially in its more advanced forms - can be about completely blanking out the mind.
