In sitting meditation, our practice is to watch our thoughts arise, label them “thinking,” and return to the breath. If we were trying to find the beginning, middle, and end of each thought, we’d soon discover that there is no such thing. Trying to find the moment when one thought becomes another is like trying to find the moment when boiling water turns into steam. Yet we habitually string our thoughts together into a story that tricks us into believing that our identity, our happiness, our pain, and our problems are all solid and separate entities. In fact, like thoughts, all these constructs are constantly changing. Each situation, each thought, each word, each feeling, is just a passing memory.
