You don't need to clear your mind
You sit down, close your eyes, and wait for the quiet to arrive. Instead it gets louder.
An unanswered message. Something you should have said differently. The shopping list. A song you have not heard in fifteen years, playing at full volume for no reason at all.
Most people take this as proof that they are bad at meditating. It is closer to proof that they are awake.
The mind thinks. That is what it is for.
Asking it to stop is like asking your ears to stop hearing. You would not sit down to listen to the sea and then be annoyed that there were waves.
So the practice is not emptiness. The practice is noticing where you have gone, and coming back — without the small internal telling-off that usually comes with it.
That noticing is not the interruption of the meditation. It is the meditation. Every return is a repetition, and repetitions are how anything gets easier.
It helps to stop treating thoughts as intruders. They are more like weather passing across a window. You do not have to argue with rain. You can watch it and stay where you are.
Some sessions will be busy from beginning to end. You will come back a hundred times and lose it a hundred and one. Nothing has gone wrong. A busy session practised kindly is worth more than a calm one practised strictly.
