When practicing meditation, the greatest burden is placed on the behavior of one’s own mind.
No matter what meditation method you practice, ultimately the key is how you control your mind.
And this key can be said to be the core of practicing meditation.

The Buddha repeatedly taught his monks the methods of training and the mental preparation required.

The Blessed One said: "When a bhikkhu concentrates his sacred mind, there are five objects to which attention should be directed."

"If bhikkhus should, while attending to an object, give rise to negative thoughts relating to desire, anger, aversion, and so on, he should attend, apart from that object, to another object relating to good deeds.

When he attends, apart from that object, to another object relating to good deeds, the negative thoughts relating to desire, anger, aversion, and so on, are abandoned and subsided. By abandoning them, he is able to fix his mind firmly within, calm it, unify it, and concentrate it.

Just like a skilled carpenter or his disciple using a small nail to drive in, drive out, or pull out a larger nail.
<Vitakkasaṇṭhāna Sutta MN 20>

The act of concentrating in meditation is to train your concentration by deciding on a specific object and focusing on it.
The object can be anything, such as breathing, sound, smell, touch, feeling, or inner movements, but whether you are a beginner or an expert, it is basic to focus on breathing.
When you are concentrating on that object, your mental tension may weaken or abrupt inspiration, like the needle on a record skipping, another thought or delusion occur frequently may interrupt your concentration.
By suppressing and eliminating these interruptions, you can develop your concentration.

The task of suppressing and eliminating these frequent, fabricated delusions and sudden flashes of inspiration is the task and duty of the practice of meditation.


One guide to this is self-observation. In other words, by concisely writing out the contents of the fabricated delusion in a notebook and outputting it, you can actively control your thought process so that it doesn’t go round in circles like a carousel.
Also, as stated in the Buddhist scriptures introduced here, by thinking positively against negative delusions, you can defeat the enemy, which is the evil deed that degrades the quality of your meditation.

Specifically, it goes like this:

Lust – bereavement, dead bodies, aging, disease
Anger – pity, compassion, sympathy
Worry1 – the uncertainty of when I will die.

In this way, by finding thoughts that oppose the negative, evil delusions and using them to oppose them, you can defeat the evil thoughts.

If you can’t control quite these malicious delusions in your mind pop up frequently, it’s important to re-examine your preparation steps.

  1. Matthew 6:27
    Which of you by worrying can add a single ounce to your life? Why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin. And yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
    -Omitted-
    Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will worry about itself. Sufficient for each day is its own trouble. ↩︎