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!

1st approach feels like "wow, I had no idea this was happening in my head".
2nd approach feels like watching a movie with your mind writing a script for you. Can be quite breathtaking with strong momentum concentration in place. The degree of freedom you provide the mind with can vary substantially - from working within a chosen topic/area to wandering all over the universe of available thoughts.
And the 3rd option feels good because it lets you quit all the worrying and trying and proactive search and just drift into gazing at a color or a dot for hours and not be so result oriented already!

I'm not sure I understand the difference between those two options. If you can't notice a thought for a few seconds, how can you follow it?

What are you actually doing differently in the two options? What are you doing with the thoughts in Option 1 if you're not concentrating on them? Option 2 is just thoughts coming faster than in Option 1, right?

Let me narrow it down to the one question that really bothers me.
As of now, I can't notice subtle thoughts as they arise. It looks like many beginners have the same problem - a new thought gets all of your attention right away as it pops up, there is none left to do the noticing.
However, I am able to become aware of that tought with a little lag (1-2 sec). My concern is whether or not I should go for noticing such thoughts despite the time lag and the fact that they are actually past thoughts (it seems to be contradictory to the concept of observing the ultimate reality of the present moment)?

Noting is not just for suppressing trains of thought. If you're interested in noting, note everything that arises, whenever you become aware of it, and don't worry if you don't see stuff right away. Momentum and speed build with practice. So, in your case, you notice a thought as "thought". If you become aware of the fact that it has been there for a while already, note "lag" or "late". If you worry, note "worrying". If you have doubts, note "doubt"....Then move on to whatever takes center stage next. ("itch", "breath", "bored", "imagining"...)

An alternative would be to actively calm down the thinking process. This is more in line with the samatha you already have done. Basically, you sit and watch the breath or any other primary object (kasina etc.). Whenever you notice a thought, become aware of the subtle tension in the body associated with the thought, especially tension in the face, head, neck and shoulders. Actively release this tension, feel it relax, lean into the relaxation, feel how pleasant it is. Smile if you want to. And return to your main object. (For more details about this approach look at Bhante V's material here.)

Best wishes
Christian

Hey Jesse, just an fyi. There really is a range for when people get access concentration and/or jhana factors, even with all things being equal, like practice time, technique, baseline concentration and general ability to not throw things through windows when the sitting sucks. Just like learning an instrument: most people aren't ready to perform in front of a crowd after playing for only six months. You're slowly building skills, imperceptibly at first, but they're building and it sounds like you've been sitting long enough for the fruits to not be too much further away.

I haven't worked with kasinas so I'm not qualified to suggest either sticking with that or going back to the breath...Ah screw it, go back to the breath. The breath moves, which fills up all of your attention much easier and gets you used to sustained focus.

By most accounts, insight goes down a lot smoother with the ability to calm the mind. You can use noting for calming the mind, in a samatha practice. Note your ass off; it keeps you in the present moment, keeps you alert. The noting only gets dropped once sustained thought (or focus really, but according to the suttas Sid called it thought) is established, or at the very latest when piti/sukha start revving up. So you use the breath as a primary object, and note any and all present moment distractions.

One quick way to note is: present, past, future. If what you were just thinking about is what's happening now, you note Present. If you're thinking about how shitty that sit was yesterday, you note Past, etc.

Or work from the four foundations of mindfulness. Most people start with the body first because the mind is too much of a circus in the beginning. You've been diving right into the 3rd Fou/Mind., (thoughts and emo's), without getting yourself acclimated to more coherent phenomena, like bodily sensations, the breath, etc.., and without getting yourself calm. I'd think about simplifying your noting practice by using the first two satipatthanas to start with.

Thank you so much for your replies, that was truly helpful!