The process of observing your thoughts goes on and on in this way: thoughts followed by gaps, followed by thoughts, followed by gaps. If you continue this practice, very gradually the gaps become longer and longer, and your experience of resting the mind as it is becomes more direct. So there are two basic states of mind—with thought and without thought—and both are supports for meditation. In the beginning, attention to thoughts always wavers. That’s fine. If you find your mind wandering, just allow yourself to be aware of your mind wandering. Even daydreams can become the support for meditation if you allow your awareness to gently permeate them.
And when you suddenly remember, Oops, I was supposed to be watching my thoughts, I was supposed to be focusing on form, I was supposed to be listening to sounds, I was supposed to be watching my thoughts, just bring your attention back to whatever it was you were supposed to attend to. The great secret about these “Oops” moments is that they’re actually split-second experiences of your fundamental nature.
It would be nice to hang on to every “Oops” you experience. But you can’t. If you try, they harden into concepts—ideas about what “Oops” is supposed to mean. The good news is that the more you practice, the more “Oopses” you’re likely to experience. And gradually these “Oopses” start to accumulate, until one day “Oops” becomes a natural state of mind, a release from habitual patterns of neuronal gossip that allows you to look at any thought, any feeling, and any situation with total freedom and openness.
“Oops” is a wonderful thing.
Mingyur Rinpoche. The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness (pp. 162-163).
I wanted to offer a few more concrete practice tips - there are few better or more profound instructions than what famed teacher Mingyur Rinpoche explains here. People more familiar with Buddhist Modernist / Pragmatic Dharma / Theravadan practice traditions assume we need heroically long sits, that insight can only come through some grueling process of suffering. I’m thinking about first person accounts of Goenka retreats, or even how Shinzen Young describes the pain and suffering he endured as a Shingon monk. In our Western mindset we think - no pain no gain! That isn’t to say that the path is all sunshine and roses, but it’s simply not true that we need to sit for long uncomfortable stretches in order to make progress. My teacher would also suggest we sit for no longer than 20-30 minutes at a time, and try to practice with intentionality the whole time, rather than sit for an hour and have our meditation degrade. Quality > quantity. Mingyur Rinpoche goes onto say that sitting intentionally even for a minute or two minutes at first can have a profound impact. Consistency beats endurance.
There are two other key insights from Mingyur in this quote. First, that the moment we realize we’ve gotten distracted and come back to the object is something to be celebrated! Too often (particularly people early on in their practice), when we realize we are distracted we could react with disappointment - “damn, I lost focus again.” Instead we should consider each noticing as a moment of triumph! Second, that there’s something special about the moment of noticing, that in fact in that moment we are making contact with the spacious vast presence right then and there. Awakening isn’t some state we fly off into; it can be found right here and now in every moment of presence.