What Idea Do Hannah Knapp's New Students Arrive With?

Hannah Knapp tells Stewart Alsop on Crazy Wisdom that people arrive already holding an idea of what meditation is, and that idea steers the practice. When she teaches, she keeps the instructions short. Mindfulness, as she guides it, is paying attention to what is happening now, without judgment.

Afterward she asks what the sit was like. New students often say their mind would not stop. She tells them of course it did not. The mind thinks the way the nose smells. The point is not to stop thinking. It is to notice, interrupt, and come back to the present, over and over. People do not think less as they improve.