“Recollection, as understood in respect to the spiritual life, means attention to the presence of God in the soul. It includes the withdrawal of the mind from external and earthly affairs in order to attend to God and Divine things. It is the same as interior solitude in which the soul is alone with God.” – The Catholic Encyclopedia (1917)
The activity that Buddhists call meditation, Christians call recollection. Although, as it noted, interior solitude is also another term for it. The Eastern Orthodox practice recollection in order to gain stillness (hesychia).
Unfortunately, some Christians have decided to use the word meditation. Although this matches current usage, it does not match what the Bible means by the word.
In the Bible the word meditation is reserved strictly for discursive meditation. Meditation is always used for the activity of thinking about, or pondering on, the word of God or the works of God. The word meditation is never used in the sense of interior. solitude
John Main, a. Benedictine monk, has compounded the problem by not only using the word meditation but by also borrowing the word mantra. It would have been better for him to have called it prayer. Maranatha, after all, is a prayer for the Lord to come (“O Lord, come!”).
I follow the Eastern Orthodox hesychasts of using the Jesus Prayer for the practice of recollection. On the in-breath, I say mentally, “Lord Jesus Christ.” On the out-breath, I say mentally, “have mercy on me.”