Meditating is like looking at the sky. Your mind is the sky, but then you get all these noisy birds flying around. The birds are your thoughts. You have to get rid of the birds. But then, you see a beautiful bird, and you start looking at the bird. You start playing with it, and then you get attached to the bird… You need to get rid off all the birds, and just look at the sky and let the sunshine in.
By removing your wandering thoughts and attachments, you begin to restore your Buddha nature, thus completely recovering your innate abilities.

From article: The Importance of The Three Jewels by Roger Cantu
via : purifymind.com
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Art by
Horia Varlan

Just let go and relax. You don't have to block whatever thoughts, emotions, or sensations arise, but neither do you have to follow them.

Just rest in the open present, simply allowing whatever happens to occur. If thoughts or emotions come up, just allow yourself to be aware of them. Objectless shinay meditation doesn't mean just letting your mind wander aimlessly among fantasies, memories, or daydreams. There's still some presence of mind that may loosely be described as a center of awareness. You may not be fixating on anything in particular, but you're still aware, still present to what's happening in the here and now.

When we meditate in this objectless state, we're actually resting the mind in its natural clarity, entirely indifferent to the passage of thoughts and emotions. This natural clarity--which is beyond any dualistic grasping of subject and object--is always present for us in the same way that space is always present.

In a sense, objectless meditation is like accepting whatever clouds and mist might obscure the sky while recognizing that the sky itself remains unchanged even when it is obscured.

by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

This has to do with the importance of a basic attitude of friendliness.

Sometimes when our thoughts are like little fleas that jump off our noses, we just see the little flickers of thought, like ripples, which might have a very liberating quality. For the first time you might feel, ---My goodness! There's so much space, and it's always been here."

Another time it might feel like that elephant is sitting on you, or like you have your own private pornographic movie going on, or your own private war, in technicolor and stereo.

It's important to realize that meditation doesn't prefer the flea to the elephant, or vice versa. It is simply a process of seeing what is, noticing that, accepting that, and then going on with life, which, in terms of the technique, is coming back to the simplicity of nowness, the simplicity of the out-breath.

Whether you are completely caught up in discursive thought for the entire sitting period, or whether you feel that enormous sense of space, you can regard either one with gentleness and a sense of being awake and alive to who you are.

Either way, you can respect that. So taming teaches that meditation is developing a nonaggressive attitude to whatever occurs in your mind. It teaches that meditation is not considering yourself an obstacle to yourself; in fact, it's quite the opposite.

by Pema Chodron