Not really. Contemplative practice has been part of the very early church from long before the modern age and exposures to Eastern practices. It has a long history of tradition. From
here:
Contemplative prayer is by no means a modern addition to Christianity. Contemplative Christian prayer has representatives in every age. A form of contemplative prayer was first practiced and taught by the Desert Fathers of Egypt, Palestine and Syria including Evagrius, St. Augustine and St. Gregory the Great in the West, and Pseudo-Dionysius and the Hesychasts in the East.
In the Middle Ages, St. Bernard of Clarivaux, William of St. Thierry and Guigo the Carthusian represent the Christian contemplative tradition, as well as the Rhineland mystics, including St. Hildegard, St. Mechtilde, Meister Eckhart, Ruysbroek and Tauler. Later, the author of The Imitation of Christ and the English mystics of the 14th century such as the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Walter Hilton, Richard Rolle, and Julian of Norwich became part of the Christian contemplative heritage.
After the Reformation, the Carmelites of St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross and St. Therese of Lisieux; the French school of spiritual writers, including St. Francis de Sales, St. Jane de Chantal and Cardinal Berulle; the Jesuits, including fathers De Caussade, Lallemont and Surin; the Benedictines, like Dom Augustine Baker and Dom John Chapman, and modern Cistercians such as Dom Vital Lehodey and Thomas Merton, all cultivated practices in their lives that they believed led to the spiritual gift of contemplation.
That we find such practices also exist in the East speaks to the nature of the human being itself in relation to the divine. I for one do not begin with the idea that if someone else has discovered the same practices in other parts of the world and other religions, that that means your practice is "of the devil" or some such fear reaction. If that was so, you should get rid of you own sacred scriptures because other religions have them too!
This of course makes no sense. That you find similar practices and approaches in religions the world over speaks to the heart of the human being in relation to finding Ultimate Peace, in whatever ways we all have available to us.
In any religious path, and particularly in Christianity, a practice of contemplation is the greatest patch to finding that along its own traditional trajectory. As Archbishop Rowan Williams said in that article linked to in an earlier post,
Contemplating God in Jesus, he declared, teaches Christians “how to look at one another and at the whole of God’s creation.”
Archbishop Williams described contemplation as “the key” to prayer, liturgy, art, ethics, and “the essence of a renewed humanity” that is free from “self-oriented, acquisitive habits” and their distortions.
“To put it boldly, contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial systems and our advertising culture and our chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit,” the Anglican archbishop said.
This then comes into my response about how one reads and understands scriptures is influenced by either how clear or how clouded our active minds are. As you see above he points how it teaches one, "how to look at one another and at the whole of God's creation.". People look at one another all the time. But what are they seeing, and does that change when our own hearts and minds are changed, when they become open and clear to Spirit? Of course, yes! So when you "study scripture", with whose set of eyes are you seeing it? If you practice contemplation, it will enormously affect how you see, what you hear, and how you respond. If you're only looking out of your 'clouded' mind, trying to see what you can, you are seeing, "through a glass darkly", and do not truly see what is before you.
As I just pointed out above, what we are able or unable to see in what we look at right before us is determined by the set of eyes that are looking. People whose minds are darkened can study scripture all day long and what they will see amounts to nothing but a reflection of their own minds. And that is a fact. It is true of anyone. It is not just a matter of reading with your eyes, or developing good study skills. No amount of head knowledge will ever allow to be seen what is a matter of the eyes of the heart to see. If you do not develop the heart, you will never see anything but what the unillumined mind can present. It takes both to be developed. Without contemplation, you are relying on the head, and what it sees will only always reflect how it see, reflecting the one seeing, in all their biases, fears, anxieties, etc.
Don't forget Jesus told the religious of his day to study scripture because it spoke of him. They studied, but still could not see. So what he meant was basically to have an opened mind through the illumination of Spirit, through the heart, in order to see what is right before them that they are unable to see currently in all their religiousness. The first commandment is to
love God, not to go read the Bible. Love is an action of the heart. Contemplation is the key to this, without which, you see only what your own biases from the mind allow to be seen. Same story throughout all ages.
It depends on how it's practiced, doesn't it? I've seen more than a lion's share of Christian churches that are in fact exactly like the Pharisees as portrayed in the Gospel of Matthew. It's not hard to imagine Jesus stand before these religious who identify by his name and saying precisely the same things to them he did to the Pharisees of his day. They created a stumbling block for people to come to God in their self-righteousness, substituting correct beliefs and doctrines over hearing, seeing, knowing, and loving with the eyes of the heart. "By their fruits you shall know them", not by their religiousness.
That freedom produces righteousness from within. It is not expressed by conformity to the rules set forth by others to follow. It is instead a living law, being written moment to moment upon the heart that knows God, with the heart, with Spirit. The mind without that, is an empty shell.
Who was scripture written by, but those with a heart that knew God? It's not a book chiseled in stone, but being written on the tablets of each and every heart that knows God, moment to moment. It is not an external code you conform to, but an internal Life you live and create.
