Good morning, fellow meditators!
Here is my story.
I been doing samatha practices for about 10 months now. Started with some basic watching the breath staff, but for the last 6 months been doing color kasina. My goal is to get to the access concentration level and I haven't reached it yet.
The amount of time and effort I invested into this venture and the results I am getting, or rather the absense of any, make me believe that I'm just doing something wrong. I don't buy the story that some meditators need days while others - years to get to access concentration. If you fail for several months, you have to be doing something wrong, thats how I feel about it.
So instead of spending 6 more months staring at a colored disk, training raw concentration, and probably just to realise "ok, now I'm sure this isn't working", I'm thinking of adding a few notches to my game by introducing a mental noting practice with regard to those subtle thoughts that seem to get me off track with my concentration all the time.
My question is about the proper mechanics for noticing thoughts. I can think of taking two substantially different approaches to it:
1. Trying to stay still, not force anything and notice the last thought that comes through the mind. The problem is - I can't catch it right away when it occurs, so I have to notice it postfactum and with a substantial lag, like something that was on my mind a second or two ago. It kinda has a taste of watching past events. But this way I am not forcing thoughts and I'm being fair in a sence of watching what really happened.
2. Concentrate on a thought (for example a pleasant recollection from the past) and continue to apply enought concentration to notice the next thought in the chain it gives birth to. The good thing about this one is that I can catch the new thought the moment it arises with no obvious lag. But it comes at a cost of forcing the mind with the brute power of concentration to go in a prearranged direction. So it kinda has a forced flavor.
I'd be delighted to hear out your thoughts on which approach to pick! I will also throw in a 3rd option - forget noting altogether and keep bringing attention to a fixed reference point (kasina) waiting for concentration to overpower it all!