In May 2019, the author, a Carmelite friar, was asked by his Order to hold a series of talks on Christian meditation in the Carmelite spirit.

The book, Is-Sengha tat-Talb, which was so popular that 2,000 copies were printed, was the result.

The book led to a series of talks on Christian meditation, which started to be held regularly every month. The present book is the result.

During these months, the participants also had the opportunity to meet Buddhist abbess Miao Duo and her team and compare the two traditions of meditation.

The Carmelite tradition of prayer was compared to the Zen tradition of Shikan-taza or staying silent. The Carmelite tradition, of course, believes in God while the question of God does not arise in the Buddhist practice.

Professor Michael Zammit contributes a long introduction in which he further elaborates on the Sanskrit tradition in comparison to Christian meditation.

The series of talks was a form of "heightened iconoclasm" in protest against the "almost idolatrous fixation and the cacophony of religious imagery which we seem to create without limitation in our religious expression".

Then follow a series of 21 talks or meditations, starting from the statement that meditation is nothing more than being present. The practice of meditation does not rely on a formula but must be lived within the context of a moral and ethical life, lived in a prudent and wise manner.

Being present also means the opposite of letting one's mind get distracted. It means being vigilant and aware that life and everything is contingent.

To meditate does not mean just reserving some time every day. It does not mean expecting to derive some satisfaction from it. It helps one to not get down nor get over-excited when things go wrong or go right.

This practice of meditation focuses on breathing and also on repeating the same word, in this case Jesus. This is not a mantra as people of the East do. It is a real word, a name, rather than Aum or Om.

The author quotes a rather surprising quotation from the mystic Dutch Jew Etty Hilesum, a Holocaust victim: "I have sipped his breath out of the beaker of his mouth and perhaps this is the first time in my life that I have really kissed a man.... I gave myself to him out of genuine friendship and because I felt he had a right after all the years we had spent together. That sounds so noble. There is something of that about it, of course. But it isn't just giving on my part; it also becomes an act of taking and of pleasure. Bodies that have known each other for so long suddenly begin to move with their own laws and rhythms.... Perhaps that is the only real way of kissing a man. Not just out of sensuality but also from a desire to breathe for one moment through a single mouth. So that a single breath passes through both. And it was with S. that I had this experience for the first time."

Naturally, this Dutch-Jewish mystic is not the only one to be quoted in the book. Innumerable saints and mystics get quoted with a fair amount naturally coming from the Carmelite Order like St John of the Cross. But right through the book Eastern mystics get quoted too. And to counter the Dutch-Jewish mystic he quotes from Santa Maria Maddalena de Pazzi also on the experience of kissing God.