When I first began meditating, I kept waiting for it to feel like it was “working.” Instead, I mostly just felt like I was doing it wrong. At the time, I struggled quite a bit with anxiety and exhaustion, and I would sit down to meditate expecting calmness and a gradual quieting of the mind. Instead, I encountered racing thoughts, discomfort, restlessness, sadness, and sometimes even irritation. Naturally, I came to believe that I was simply bad at meditation, when in reality I misunderstood the practice entirely.
Many of us approach meditation the same way we approach modern self-improvement routines and tools: as a method of eliminating unwanted feelings. For example, we view exercise as directly correlated with physical strength, while regular sleep, hydration, and nutrition correlate with physical energy. By that logic, regular meditation should translate to complete clarity of mind. Nevertheless, Buddhist practice and meditation are not primarily about feeling good, nor are they about shutting off our minds. Rather, they are about learning how to stop fighting reality.
This misconception is incredibly common, especially in the West. Western culture often presents meditation as “thinking about nothing,” while media depictions portray meditation as a total transformation in which an overwhelmed person can completely clear their mind within one sitting. Wellness spaces and social media often reinforce imagery of meditation as effortless stillness and ease. All of this ultimately shapes the myth of the empty mind, which often leads beginners to frustration when their experience does not align with this depiction, and they are unable to stop their thoughts.
The mind produces thoughts the way the lungs produce breath, and just as we do not shame ourselves for breathing, we should not shame ourselves for thinking, even in frustrating moments when we find ourselves overthinking.
In Buddhism, meditation is the practice of sitting with our thoughts and noticing them without judgment and without being consumed by them. Thus, meditation does not “fail” when thoughts arise. Instead, we learn to observe them with awareness rather than suppression, especially when feelings such as attachment, anger, or aversion arise. When we practice meditation, we are strengthening our relationship with our minds, not attempting to exert total control over them.
This is not to suggest that we have no influence over our mind states, as a significant part of Buddhist practice is about cultivating agency, discipline, and skillful mental habits. We do possess the ability to guide the mind toward calmness when it feels agitated or begins to spiral. However, the idea that we can simply turn the mind off completely, especially with little to no practice or effort, is unrealistic.
It is crucial to consistently practice and maintain an open mind while sitting with discomfort during meditation, because discomfort itself is an essential aspect of the practice. Modern life often trains us to avoid suffering in our daily experience, and whether consciously or not, we often spend our time trying to distract ourselves from unpleasant thoughts and feelings. We do this by keeping ourselves constantly stimulated, whether at work, running errands, consuming some form of media, or spending every spare moment on our phones.
When we are so used to constant stimulation, silence can begin to feel threatening. Thus, stillness often reveals what distraction was previously covering up. So when we finally choose to sit with ourselves without distraction, there is nothing left to pull us away from what is present within us. We may then encounter grief, loneliness, anxiety, boredom, uncertainty, and even self-judgment.
These are all incredibly uncomfortable feelings, but rather than distracting ourselves from them, Buddhist wisdom encourages us to face them through a lens of curiosity and non-judgment in order to work through them. Ultimately, we must think about our spiritual practice as changing our relationship with pain rather than eliminating it, as suffering tends to intensify when we resist experience.
In meditation, this means allowing thoughts, emotions, and sensations to arise without immediately labelling them as problems to be solved or experiences to be pushed away. Instead of tightening around discomfort or trying to steer the mind toward something more pleasant, we practice noticing what is present, staying with it long enough to understand it, and letting it pass in its own time without interference. The emphasis is not on achieving a particular mental state, but on remaining aware of whatever state is already present.
In our day-to-day lives, this translates into noticing how quickly we reach for distraction when something uncomfortable arises. It may be the reflexive urge to turn to our phones, fill silence with noise, stay constantly busy, or mentally rehearse ways to avoid certain feelings. Buddhist practice and meditation invite us to become aware of these patterns rather than acting on them automatically. Over time, this awareness creates a small but significant space between feeling and reaction, allowing us to respond to discomfort with more intention rather than escape. Then, we may begin to quiet the excess noise in our minds . . . but not without significant practice.
As previously mentioned, sitting with discomfort is not passive resignation, and Buddhism is not asking people to tolerate harmful or unhealthy circumstances. An important clarification that I feel is necessary to make, especially for Western audiences, is that acceptance does not mean approval. Sitting with our feelings of discomfort is essential, but it is not always the solution. Rather, it is a pathway toward a solution, allowing us to see our mind states and impulses clearly before reacting, thereby enabling a more mindful and deliberate response.
When we create space between our feelings and our reactions to them by doing something as simple—yet often immensely difficult—as sitting and breathing, we are able to respond rather than react. By remaining present with our discomfort long enough to understand it, we can respond with more compassion than we likely would if we acted impulsively.
Ultimately, the practice of meditation has the power to change our lives, not by making us emotionless or turning us into serene beings capable of turning our minds off, but by making us less controlled by emotional turbulence. We may then be able to respond with greater kindness and awareness, stay grounded, and develop a clearer understanding of our own minds. This understanding allows us to notice harmful feelings and thoughts without immediately being consumed by them, ultimately granting us greater agency over our mental states.
While meditation may not give us completely empty minds, it may instead help us become less afraid of them, even in the presence of emotional turmoil.
And to everyone just getting started with their meditation practice: you should not expect absolute serenity. Instead, know that your mind may not stop racing, especially at first, and perhaps not ever in the way you have previously imagined. Do not let this deter you. Sit with the discomfort, notice it without judgment, and remember that in Buddhism peace is not the absence of difficulty, but meeting it in a different way.
In this way, meditation becomes less about reaching a quieter mind and more about developing a steadier presence within whatever mind we already have, learning that nothing within us is too much to be held in awareness.
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