Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment

by Robert Wright

This sort of readjustment of attention, by the way, is a perfectly fine thing to do. In mindfulness meditation as it’s typically taught, the point of focusing on your breath isn’t just to focus on your breath. It’s to stabilize your mind, to free it of its normal preoccupations so you can observe things that are happening in a clear, unhurried, less reactive way. And “things that are happening” emphatically includes things happening inside your mind. Feelings arise within you—sadness, anxiety, annoyance, relief, joy—and you try to experience them from a different vantage point than is usual, neither clinging to the good feelings nor running away from the bad ones, but rather just experiencing them straightforwardly and observing them. This altered perspective can be the beginning of a fundamental and enduring change in your relationship to your feelings; you can, if all goes well, cease to be their slave.