Small Universe

Sustained single-minded focus is what works.

From Wikipedia:

"Hesychastic practice involves acquiring an inner stillness and ignoring the physical senses. In this, Hesychasm shows its roots in Evagrius Pontikos and even in the Greek tradition of asceticism going back to Plato. The Hesychast interprets Christ's injunction in the Gospel of Matthew to "go into your closet to pray", to mean that he should ignore the senses and withdraw inward. St John of Sinai writes: "Hesychasm is the enclosing of the bodiless mind (nous) in the bodily house of the body." (Ladder, Step 27, 5, (Step 27, 6 in the Holy Transfiguration edition).)"

"While he maintains his practice of the Jesus Prayer, which becomes automatic and continues twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the Hesychast cultivates sobriety (Gr. nepsis). Sobriety is the mental ascesis described above that rejects the tempting thoughts; it puts a great emphasis on focus and attention. The Hesychast is to pay extreme attention to the consciousness of his inner world and to the words of the Jesus Prayer, not letting his mind wander in any way at all."

"The goal at this stage is a practice of the Jesus Prayer with the mind in the heart, which practice is free of images (see Pros Theodoulon). What this means is that by the exercise of sobriety (the mental ascesis against tempting thoughts), the Hesychast arrives at a continual practice of the Jesus Prayer with his mind in his heart and where his consciousness is no longer encumbered by the spontaneous inception of images: his mind has a certain stillness and emptiness that is punctuated only by the eternal repetition of the Jesus Prayer."

This practice of the Eastern Orthodox Church is very similar to the Pure Land Buddhist practice.

"Some Pure Land Buddhists have taught that in order for a devotee to be reborn in Amitabha's Western Paradise or Western Pureland, they should chant or repeat a mantra or prayer to Amitabha as often as possible to reinforce a proper and sincere state of mind"