The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the optimal interaction between attention and peripheral awareness.

The simple act of consistently sitting down and placing your attention on the meditation object, day after day, is the essential first step from which everything else in the Ten Stages flows.

Diligence helps start you on your way, but the real solution to these obstacles is learning to enjoy your practice. One simple, powerful way to do that is to intentionally savor all feelings of physical comfort and deliberately cultivate the pleasure that can be found in quietness. Take satisfaction in the fact that you have actually sat down to me

Force, guilt, and willpower won’t produce a sustainable practice, not least because of the negative emotions they stir up. Training yourself means working on your motivation and intentions until the simple acts of sitting down and meditating follow naturally.

Repeat step 3 until the meditation session is over, and remember, the only bad meditation session is the one you didn’t do!

You’re not actually struggling with meditating, you’re struggling with unrealistic expectations and an idealized image of what you think “should” be happening.

It doesn’t matter that your mind wandered. What’s important is that you realized it. To become annoyed or self-critical in the “aha!” moment will slow down your progress. You can’t scold the mind into changing,

Stable attention is the ability to intentionally direct and sustain the focus of attention, as well as to control the scope of attention.

Attention analyzes experience, and peripheral awareness provides the context. When one or the other doesn’t do its job, we misinterpret, overreact, and make poor decisions.