The combined problems of forgetting and mind-wandering will dominate your meditation sessions in Stage Two. Forgetting means we forget the meditation object, as well as our intention to focus on the breath. Mind-wandering is what happens after we’ve forgotten what we were doing: the mind will wander from thought to thought, often for a long time, before we “wake up” to what is happening. At the root of these problems are the various types of spontaneous movements of attention described in the Overview. We place our attention on the breath, but the mind produces distractions.
