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"We are what we think. To meditate is to use your mind to open your mind. And in this process, the mind reveals itself as something very different from what we usually think it is. "The thing that generates our thoughts"—that's the common notion of the mind. But meditation isn't about cultivating the mind as a thought-machine. Thoughts come and go all the time, of course, but when we meditate, we try not to be trapped by that flow. Instead, we try to experience the mind directly. What kind of experience can there be, beyond all those thoughts? It's obviously not something that can be contained in words, since words embody thoughts. But we can still use words to point towards this experience. That's why Buddhists sometimes say that "mind is Buddha." We say that the mind itself is pure awareness of things as they really are. It finds no difference between itself and anything else—yet it insists that rivers really are rivers, and trees really are trees. We say that this pure awareness is itself wisdom and compassion. And we say that it is you—your true self. It's not you as you usually think of yourself, yet it is more you than your most familiar thoughts. Meditation is Work
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