In the beginning, meditation is a practice that teaches us to focus our attention on a single point, perhaps the breath or a mantra or the space between two thoughts. As we focus, we discover how many thoughts we have. We begin to see that the mind is nothing but thoughts about things, and thoughts about thoughts. The mind races without order or purpose from one thing to the next, careening from the past to the future. We also see that all of these thoughts are self-centered; that is, all of the scenes that our thoughts create have the central character of “me.”