focusing on your breath as I am. Early in the retreat, I could go a whole forty-five-minute meditation session without ever sustaining focus for ten consecutive breaths. And I know, because I was counting! Time and again, after I counted three or four breaths, my mind would wander, and then eventually I’d realize that I had lost count—or, in some cases, that I was still going through the motions of counting but was in fact thinking about something else and not consciously feeling the breaths.
