Arthur C. Brooks explains why Western meditation often fails: the brain isn't built to think about nothing. The Dalai Lama spends his first two hours studying scripture and thinking deeply, not emptying his mind. Prayer works better because it lets the brain do what it's wired for: focused, directed thought.
What most Westerners don't understand about meditation is not getting as spaced out as you possibly can. You know, single point meditation is not even the most common type of meditation. It's actually thinking seriously. What's single point? Single point meditation is where you look at a flame of a candle and, and try to, try to get space to, to try to think about nothing. And that's one of the reasons that meditation is so frustrating for most Westerners, because thinking about nothing is almost impossible. Your brain is not made to think about nothing, to clear everything. But they think that like the Dalai Lama just, you know, wakes up and just thinks about nothing all day long. I mean, the Dalai Lama wakes up the first 2 hours of his day are spent studying a piece of Tibetan scripture and thinking about it deeply for 2 hours, right? And so prayer concentrates you in that way, in a way through your brain is supposed to do what your brain is supposed to do. That's actually what you want, as opposed to being directed by some exogenous source of information.
