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Silent Assemblies 
Thank you, Mike, a thought provoking piece, and a nice quote from Thomas Kelly. On the question of whether it is we who initiate this type of prayer or are responding to it in some way, this seems to have been asked a long time ago by the Chinese, with their fusion of Zen and Pure Land, whereby the Pure Land nianfo (‘Namo Amituofo’) became a Zen-style meditation practice. The meditator would repeat the nianfo, but then occasionally stop and ask a Zen koan – ‘Who is it who is saying the nianfo?’
Thanks, Tom! Now that is a really interesting point about the Chinese meditators. I nearly mentioned the (Japanese) nembutsu as an example of repeated prayer, but then I thought I might confuse the issue. What I hadn’t heard of was the koan – that’s superb – spot on!
ouch, thought i was replying to just you, Mike, what to do?
No, the comments are public, Carol – but I haven’t seen anything else from you, so I’m not sure if there’s a problem…