Belongs To Tradition

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Contemplative Disciplines gathers twenty five practices unified by a shared aim, training attention or the body toward stillness, insight or communion, drawn from nearly every major religious tradition plus several modern syntheses built on older material.

The largest cluster comes from Indian and Buddhist tradition: yoga, pranayama, tantra, hatha yoga and kundalini yoga from Hindu and yogic sources, zazen and vipassana from Zen and Theravada Buddhism, dzogchen from Tibetan Buddhism and Bon, kalachakra from Indian Buddhist tantra, and japa, repeated mantra recitation, practised across Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Jain traditions alike. Several of these carry a registered restricted tradition of their own: dzogchen's own record says its central transmission requires a qualified lineage holder and cannot be conveyed by description, tantra's own record says it does not supply initiatory content, and japa distinguishes a mantra freely taught from a personal mantra a guru gives privately. This entry follows each member's own published limit rather than adding to it.

Chinese tradition contributes qigong and tai chi, cultivating qi through movement and breath, and Sufism contributes dhikr, remembrance of God's names organised into initiatory orders. Christian tradition contributes contemplative prayer and hesychasm, both aimed at wordless attention to God, the second centred on the Jesus Prayer and Mount Athos. Sikhism contributes naam simran, and the Plains nations contribute the vision quest, a solitary fast undertaken to seek guidance.

Fasting and pilgrimage close the group as disciplines nearly every tradition shares, and Gene Keys and mudra practice sit at its more modern and technical edges.