Talk:Meditation in popular culture

Hi all,

This article was created in response to a dispute over the main meditation article (see Talk:Meditation). It is a place to put fictional references to meditation, visualization, contemplation, mantra, yoga, and related disciplines. Please add more as you come across them--or specific references (so far sorely lacking) to episodes, page numbers, etc. Also, the article so far contains only science fiction references, but is not intended to be restricted to science fiction--some examples of meditation in other genres of fiction would certainly add to the quality. Cheers--Pariah (talk) 23:35, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Iain M. Bank's Culture
I'm not 100% sure on this, but I have a feeling that in some of the Culture novels Banks describes Culture citizens using meditation to initiate/stimulate healing processes (similar to Teal'c in SG1 and the Jedi in Star Wars come to think of it) and to alter physical traits. Off the top of my head, I believe that Excession details these processes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.151.67.45 (talk) 20:33, 10 May 2008 (UTC)


 * You're right--I'd forgotten about the culture novels. Yeah--there's some mention of the use of meditation in the process of subliming in Excession and Look to Windward, and indeed the culture citizens use a form of relaxation / visualization to change their sex, weight, height, etc.  I'm pretty sure he main character in Consider Phlebas uses a similar process to take on the likenesses of other people.  I don't remember the healing part, but I haven't read all the Culture novels.--Pariah (talk) 20:44, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Video Games
I'm not sure that video game "meditations" are of the same action that is being documented in the rest of the articles. Indeed, all fantasy MMO's and many single player games have a "meditation" of sorts to restore a health and/or an energy attribute. (Ex. Everquest) Meditation in the other popular culture references are done to achieve a state of being that they weren't at before. In video games, it's more akin to band-aid to restoring an in-game attribute. --Isaiah (talk) 16:42, 19 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm removing the games section, since no one has giving any reasons for it be a part of this article.Isaiah (talk) 08:24, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Dune
It is mentioned that the Mentat use a mantra ("It is by will alone...") along with meditation. Technically, this does not happen in the Dune book series at all. It is an addition that was decided to be put into the Dune movie by David Lynch. That part should be removed or added under the "Movies" section, or an edit should be put to clarify this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.244.5.13 (talk) 22:27, 2 April 2015 (UTC)