In theory, what is the difference?
Prayer : A reverent petition made to God, a god, or another object of worship.
Meditation : A devotional exercise of or leading to contemplation.
I guess because a prayer is a request and a medition is relaxant (very base level)
Prayer: Talking to god/goddess of choice.
Meditation: Listening to god/goddess of choice.
I think the word Meditation has changed over time … where once upon a time Meditation was seen as an way to rejovinate one self. I was automatically attributed to a god - but many other cultures meditiate as us westerners see it and there is not faith/gods are involved with it.
My Self defence master uncle meditates and he is just going through the moves in his mind.
It depends what kind of meditation you’re talking about. To me, meditation has nothing to do with religion and isn’t really comparable to prayer.
In the intro psych classes I taught, we discussed and tried meditation. It was discussed during a lesson on relaxation methods. During meditation, I led my students through a relaxation process (the standard dark room, sitting still, ‘let-distracting-thoughts-flow through-your-mind’ bit) and then had them visualize different scenes, such as a rainforest or a desert. I would have them imagine themselves interacting with what they saw, heard, and felt-- the colors and textures of trees, the gurgling of a river, the roughness of a boulder. It’s all done very quietly, with lots of time for them to get immersed in their imaginings. You come out of this feeling very sedate, but a little hyperaware, I guess is the word, of your surroundings.
Meditation like this was most similar to hypnosis. Hypnosis in this sense wasn’t the misleading stuff you see on TV or stage-- it was another relaxation method. The difference between the two is that during the hypnosis demonstration, we have the students do things and don’t limit things to the imagination. We had them do things and point out reactions, telling them it was caused by this when it was really caused by that.
For example, we’d have them hold their arms out, palms up and open, and tell them to imagine that someone had dropped a brick on their hand. They’d be asked to imagine the brick’s texture, temperature, and weight. We’d tell them that the heaviness of the brick was making their arms waver up and down slightly at first, but more pronounced as it went on. Their arms really were wavering, but it wasn’t because of a brick-- it was the natural tendency for your arm to waver when you hold it out and up for so long.
So IMO, the difference is this: prayer is associated with religion, meditation, with the subconscious and imagination. Prayer is for comfort, a request, or to talk with a deity. Meditation is to relax, or to exercise the imagination. You can also meditate in a religious sense, but I think that kind of meditation is a general waxing philosophical about your faith, or some generalized thinking about your deity.
Although I would say that many of the distinctions drawn by previous posters are valid, there is also a wide area of overlap between prayer and meditation. The contemplative prayer used in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim religions has more in common with many Eastern meditation techniques than it does with the present-day practice of intercessory prayer. And some of the concentration techniques of Buddhist meditation involve the mental repetition of certain phrases requesting good fortune for others, and would be recognized by some Westerners as prayer.
Although it is possible to practice meditation in a secular way for the psychological benefits, this is a very recent development. Meditation is a religious invention, and the vast majority of meditation practitioners around the world use it for religious purposes.
I would draw the distinction this way: Prayer is a dialogue between a person and their deity. Meditation is a set of mental techniques using either concentration or mindfulness to change a person’s mind state or relationship with the world, including, possibly, their relationship with their deity(ies).
How’s that for clunky.
Savaka already said everything I was going to say. So I’ll just add that Christian meditation (or contemplative prayer) is discussed in detail in a 14th-century book called The Cloud Of Unknowing, by an author whose name escapes me at the moment.