Meditation means catching the mind while it’s thinking. Keep this principle in mind, because it’s the foundation of focus. Your only job is to follow and catch the mind wherever it goes and whatever it thinks.
When your mind starts thinking, don’t make the mistake of believing you’re too distracted and can’t meditate. Thinking is simply what the mind does. If the mind weren’t thinking, that would be unnatural, and you’d have to ask yourself why, because something would be off.
The mind is incredibly powerful. Every time we try to force it, it does the opposite. Tell it, “Don’t love this person,” and it loves. “Don’t hate this person,” and it hates. “Don’t get angry at this person,” and it gets angry. “Don’t lose your temper,” and it loses its temper. “Don’t look down on people,” and it does. “Don’t do this,” and it does it anyway. We lose to our own mind again and again. That’s how powerful it is.
The mind works through three channels:
• The body. When we stand, walk, sit, lie down, or do anything, the mind spreads itself across all these activities.
• Speech. When we talk about this or that, or talk with different people, the mind spreads itself across our words.
• Thought. We think about all kinds of things in life: planning our work, picturing things, letting our thoughts drift here and there.
The mind is so hard to see because, in everyday life, it works through all three channels at once, spreading its energy across them. So we rarely get a good look at it. But when we bring the mind together into one spot, it becomes much easier to see.
You’ll notice that when you sit down to meditate, your mind gets chaotic, strong, and fast. You might tell yourself, “I just can’t meditate. All I get is distraction. I don’t know why my head is crammed with a million thoughts.” And in the end, you give up.
Think of your thoughts like water. If water flows out through many openings, it has no pressure and just trickles. But if it flows out through only one opening, it gushes. The smaller the opening, the stronger the flow, and you can really feel its force.
That’s why your mind seems to change so fast when you meditate. It only has one way to express itself: through thought. While you’re sitting, your body isn’t moving or going anywhere, so the mind can’t work through the body. You’re not talking to anyone, so it can’t work through speech. The only channel left is thought. So the mind thinks, and thinks, and thinks, nonstop, as if your brain were full of mental garbage.
Because of this, many meditators decide they’re too scattered. They get annoyed and bored, and they quit. But if you sit down to meditate and your mind races, jumping from one thought to the next, it means you’re doing it right. You’re seeing the mind. You’re getting to know it. You can see the very thing you’re trying to catch. You see that it’s restless and fickle, hard to guard, hard to hold back, very subtle, and always drifting toward what it wants, just as the Buddha said. Now you can aim right at it.
But if you sit and don’t notice your mind wandering at all, real concentration is actually harder to achieve, because you don’t even know what you’re chasing. You keep repeating “Buddho” over and over without ever looking at the mind. And if you never see the mind, you never experience real concentration. You sit there mumbling “Buddho,” which is only a technique.
It’s like someone who knows what a chicken looks like: they catch the right animal. They ignore the ducks, geese, dogs, and cats and go straight for the chicken.
Distraction is the ladder that leads you to the mind itself. When you see your distraction, you’re seeing your mind, because distraction is the mind’s nature, thrashing around and struggling. The more you chase it, the more restless your mind gets, and the clearer your target becomes. It’s like a bird: if it sits still on a branch, it’s hard to spot. But when it hops from branch to branch, you can see it easily.