Meditation practice is not about blanking
the mind. Trying to stop thinking would be like trying to stop digesting or stop pumping blood. The stomach is made to digest food, the heart is made to pump blood and the mind is made to think. That’s what it does. It generates thoughts, pretty much non-stop, But right now. as you are reading this page, are you involved with your stomach digesting or your heart pumping blood? Arc you attending to them? Of course not. They go on automatically in the background while your attention is directed toward reading.
During meditation practice, the idea is to direct your attention to your breath and allow the mind to do its thing automatically in the background, just like all your other organs are always doing. It’s not a battle unless you make it a battle. It’s merely a habit you are trying to form, the habit of dis-identifying with the mind as “me.” The mind is not “you” any more than the stomach or heart or ears are “you.” They are parts of you. They are part of how you get along in the world. They are important tools, but they are not you. You are something deeper and more mysterious than any of your parts – including the mind.
Bo Lozoff, The Big Mistake about Meditation
We can become restless and adverse to the breath because we always have the desire to get something. We want to find something that easily interests us, something we can focus on without much effort. If we find something interesting, such as exciting rhythmic music, we absorb right into it. But the rhythm of normal breath isn’t interesting or compelling. It’s calming, and most beings aren’t used to tranquility; they are caught in a need to be excited or interested. In other words most of us need something outside of ourselves to stimulate us and to engage our attention.
The essence of the practice life involves cultivating awareness. This process has two basic aspects. The first is clarifying the mental process. The second is experiencing — entering into awareness of the physical reality of the present moment. When we’re standing in the muddy water of everyday life, practice is often not simple and clear. But part of our challenge is to bring a certain precision and impeccability to our efforts. That’s why it’s important to keep returning to these two basic aspects of practice: first, seeing through the mental process, with all its noise; and second, entering the non-conceptual silence of reality as-it-is. As practitioners we learn to honestly and relentlessly observe the mental or conceptual process — thoughts, emotional reactions, strategies and fears — and then bring ourselves back again and again to the physical reality of the present moment.
Mindfulbalance 