Meditation For Children

David Trammel's picture

Greer mentions the usefulness of discursive mediation in your life, and in this week's Magic Monday mentioned that it was a regular practice in the past to teach mediation on subjects to children. Though from the way he says it, many wouldn't realize it was mediation.

"Children were taught to keep a notebook in which they wrote down passages in the books they read that struck them as important, or moving, or worth serious thought; those passages then became themes for meditation. Selected Bible verses were also common themes for discursive meditation. Another common approach was to take a list of virtues, and devote (say) a month to each of them; the child would spend a little time each morning thinking about that month's virtue, and then would try to do every day at least one thing that expressed that virtue in everyday life. Ben Franklin talks about doing this in his autobiography, iirc."

Magic Monday - 8/25/2020

I wonder if any of the parents here, does this with their children. Being childless, I don't have any experience with it, though I can clearly see the usefulness of developing this skill early.

Justin Patrick Moore's picture

What Greer is talking about is in part, keeping a common book, or commonplace book: the book of inspirational, worthy, phrases and thoughts you would like to come back to from your readings for further contemplation. Though my kids are grown, I do have grandkids. It would be neat to encourage them to do this. I do keep a commonplace book of my own, as well as notecards from my readings.

(My grandson helped me make pickles last weekend.)

Here is a great article on keeping a commonplace book:
https://ryanholiday.net/how-and-why-to-keep-a-commonplace-book/