Meditação (Besinnung)

What then is meditation actually, and properly speaking?

That about which I meditate I seek to apprehend just as it is. Meditation (Besinnung) is the fathoming of sense (Sinn) down to its source and ground. The sense of something is its what, how, why, what-for. My life is my life. Meditation on the bearing of our life is apprehension of the how, why, and wherefore of our life. Meditation on my life is self meditation. The sense of a sentence is that which is true, which irrefutably holds, is valid, which I must acknowledge, with which my thinking complies, in the face of which arbitrariness ceases. Sense is something lawful to which I must submit, subjugate myself.

Meditation is the apprehension and fathoming of what I am and ought to be. The ought requires my willing and, with the willing of what ought to be, also the willing of the ways and means which are uniquely capable of actualizing what ought to be. That is meditation. It is not submergence in the manifold fullness of pleasures, being thrown here, there, and everywhere by the whims of the moment. It is not being dominated by life but a domination of life.

Meditation is the unprejudiced knowledge of life and the consistent, resolute actualization of that which the sense of life demands.

(Das Kriegs-Triduum in Messkirch, in Heidegger-Jahrbuch 1 (2005), Alber, Freiburg, p. 22-25. Tr. Kisiel  , BH  :53)