Jewish Meditation
The following article is from "Jewish meditation." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 15 Mar 2009, 00:27 UTC. 6 May 2009.
Jewish meditation can refer to several traditional practices of contemplation, visualization, analysis, and gaining intuitive insights.
Through the centuries, some of the common forms include the practices of Abraham Abulafia, Isaac the Blind, Azriel of Gerona, Abraham ben Maimonides, Moses Cordovero, Yosef Karo, Isaac Luria, and Nachman of Breslov.
There is evidence that Judaism has had meditative practices that go back thousands of years. For instance, in the Torah, the patriarch Isaac is described as going "לשוח" (lasuach) in the field—a term understood by all commentators as some type of meditative practice (Genesis 24:63), probably prayer.
Similarly, there are indications throughout the Tanach (the Hebrew Bible) that meditation was central to the prophets. In the Old Testament, there are two Hebrew words for meditation: hāgâ (Hebrew: הגה), which means to sigh or murmur, but also to meditate, and sîḥâ (Hebrew: שיחה), which means to muse, or rehearse in one's mind.
In modern Jewish practice, one of the best known meditative practices is called hitbodedut (התבודדות) or hisbodedus is explained in Kabbalistic, Hassidic, and Mussar writings. The word hisbodedut, which derives from the Hebrew word "boded", בודד (a state of being alone) and said to be related to the sfirah of Binah (lit. book of understanding), means the process of making oneself understand a concept well through analytical study.
Kabbalah is inherently a meditative field of study. Kabbalistic meditative practices construct a supernal realm which the soul navigates through in order to achieve certain ends. One of the most well known types of meditation is Merkabah, from the root /R-K-B/ meaning "chariot"(of God).