As long as you maintain awareness or mindfulness, no matter what happens when you practice, your practice is meditation. If you watch thoughts, that is meditation. If you can’t watch your thoughts, that is meditation, too. Any of these experience can be supports for meditation. The essential thing is to maintain awareness, no matter what thoughts, emotions, sensations occur. If you remember that awareness of what occurs is meditation, then meditation becomes much easier than you may think.
Mingyur Rinpoche
from the book The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness
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Further quotes from the book The Joy of Living:
- Trying to do your best
- Neither rejecting nor accepting
- Nothing more than the natural function of the mind
- Thinking of yourself as limited
- The practice of simply observing
- Meditation on compassion
- What Buddhists mean by happiness
- Just observe it
- Setting the tone for your entire day
- Your mind just as it is
- Importance of the motivation
- Being diligent
- The best part of all
- Recognizing the inherent potential of your mind
- Oh, this is how my mind works
- Essentially good
- An experience of absolute well-being
- The need to look at the mind
- Never disturbed
- Becoming aware