An excerpt from the introduction to Beyond Distraction: Five Practical Ways to Focus the Mind by Shaila Catherine
Whether you are an experienced meditator or a beginner trying to develop mindfulness, you probably know the pain of wrestling with an unruly, distracted mind. Before you can experience the extraordinary joy of a settled and concentrated mind, you must learn how to dispel distractions and overcome restlessness. Many kinds of disruptive thoughts can obstruct your concentration in meditation. In ordinary life these same distractions can lead to anxiety, insomnia, arrogance, procrastination, apathy, worry, and depression, while negatively impacting relationships, productivity, and your ease of mind.
You use your mind in a wide variety of ways every day. You might wake up feeling a bit worried about getting things done today, let your mind wander aimlessly during a morning shower, entertain fantasies through breakfast, apply the mind to solve problems at work, judge the performance of colleagues, contemplate philosophical questions, compose emails and letters, design playful games for your children, send a friend an encouraging message, accumulate knowledge through reading, and then relax into dreams at night.
As you learn to neutralize distraction and settle the mind, be assured that Buddhism does not reject rational or reflective mental activities—we need the ability to think clearly and function intelligently in this world. Critical thinking is an asset on a spiritual path. But too often restlessness prevents us from effectively using our minds, and pervasive thoughts reinforce habits we might be happier without.
You might notice that as you sit in meditation, your mind may habitually wander away from your meditation practice and become caught up in worries or plans.
Thoughts can take many entertaining forms. They can conjure up vivid stories and create a sense of self-orientation that organizes our perspectives on the world. Thoughts stimulate emotions, lead to actions, attribute meaning to events.
Countless thoughts float through our minds every day. Impressions are woven into an intricate and seemingly inscrutable network of associations that shape how we view the world. While most thoughts zip past unnoticed, others reinforce perspectives that define our sense of self. If we think about a situation long enough, it is likely that—even without direct personal knowledge—we will develop beliefs based solely on the content of our repetitive thoughts. When meditators look closely at their minds, we are often aghast to discover how frequently thoughts reflect an obviously distorted perception of reality.
To see beyond habitual thoughts and experience their emptiness, we must be familiar with the workings of the mind. Then, when the mind is not besieged by the compulsive fabrication of self-stories, we enjoy both calm serenity and profound freedom in life.
The skillful removal of distracting thoughts will not only strengthen concentration, but it also is profoundly liberating. Freed from identification with thoughts, the mind may open to a quality of knowing beyond the realm of discursive, restless habits. As the fetter of restlessness weakens, profoundly freeing insights become available.
If you find that you are stuck in a mental rut, you can use your mind to investigate your thinking—in other words, become mindful of your mental activities.
Thoughts can be challenging objects for meditation because they occur in such rapid succession. The Buddha said, “I do not see even one other thing that changes so quickly as the mind. It is not easy to give a simile for how quickly the mind changes.”
The training begins by recognizing that a thought is just that—a thought, a creation of our own minds.
From this recognition, we distinguish what is skillful and unskillful, and then progress through a traditional training sequence in which we learn (1) to replace unwanted thoughts, (2) to examine the risks of fueling habitual patterns, (3) to withdraw attention from toxic conditions, (4) to investigate causes, and (5) to exert dedicated resolve.
When applied in meditation, these strategies can strengthen our mental skills, lighten our psychological load, enhance our joy, increase stability of the mind, and lead us to life-changing insights. These ancient techniques are also relevant to everyday life. By understanding how the mind works, you can strengthen focused attention, clear away trivial distractions, organize your priorities, and reduce the destructive forces of craving, aversion, and delusion.
We learn to meet life intimately, experience feelings fully, and think clearly—all without taking experiences to be I and mine. There is an interesting term found in the Pāli discourses—atammayatā. It means “non-identification, non-fashioning, not constructing, not made of that.” Atammayatā is the experience of not identifying with anything. It describes a rather advanced state of clarity in which we are not constructing self out of sensory experiences.
Not only has attachment to sensory experiences and personal identities ceased, but even attachment to subtle meditative attainments such as tranquility, equanimity, and insight knowledge has also ended. Delusions are not fabricated; personal opinions are not imposed upon perceptions. Atammayatā is a powerful state in which habitual defilements are at rest, and the trajectory of one’s path is inclined toward liberation. This experience of non-identification provides a clear lens through which we can more clearly comprehend the world of experience. From the perspective of atammayatā, whatever happens in the sensory field will be recognized as conditioned processes, without concocting a place for the self to stand.
Most meditators struggle just to let thoughts go, only to find themselves drawn right back into their stories. When we believe thoughts to be true, we may become entangled in the stories they tell, and assume we are those distorted internal narratives. The mind can be a potent tool, used to guide extraordinary achievements, inspire good works, and incline you toward spiritual realization. But it can also produce thoughts that lead to suffering. For many people, thoughts run rampant and seem to oppress or control their lives. You can learn to overcome habitual modes of thinking to support worldly success, deeper concentration, and insights into emptiness that characterize a liberating spiritual path.
The danger of allowing our thoughts to control us is illustrated in a line from the Pāli Canon in which a lazy meditator is warned, “You are eaten by your thoughts.”
When consumed by our thoughts, we are unable to open to the liberating potential of the Buddhist path and the transformative insights into non-identification and emptiness. The skills you learn through meditation will improve the clarity of daily decisions and ordinary activities, but the deeper purpose for training the mind is to see the emptiness of the thinking process, and to cultivate the stability that supports liberating insight.
While non-identification may sound like an appealing, fascinating, and far-off spiritual experience, it is achievable! To free ourselves from overwhelming thoughts, we can examine the conditioned patterns of mind that obscure the recognition that a thought is nothing more than a mental object being known by the mind.
By gradually freeing your mind from deluded thinking patterns and the fetter of restlessness, you may experience the deep rest of tranquil states and open the door to the liberating insight of emptiness that is at the heart of the Buddhist path of awakening.
Purchase Beyond Distraction here.
Shaila Catherine is the founder of Bodhi Courses, an online Dhamma classroom, and Insight Meditation South Bay, a Buddhist meditation center in Silicon Valley. She began practicing meditation in 1980, spent more than nine years in silent retreat, taught meditation internationally since 1996, and authored three books on mindfulness, concentration, and insight. Her first book, Focused and Fearless: A Meditator’s Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity (2008), introduces the deep concentration practices of jhāna. Her second book, Wisdom Wide and Deep: A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhāna and Vipassanā (2011), makes the systematic practices taught by Pa-Auk Sayadaw accessible to western practitioners. Her third book, Beyond Distraction: Five Practical Ways to Focus the Mind (2022), teaches skills to overcome restless thinking, rumination, and obstructive habitual patterns. Shaila’s teachings emphasize deep samadhi, jhāna, and the path of liberating insight.
Find out more about Shaila’s work at:
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