Mindfulness entails concentrated awareness of one's thoughts, actions or motivations. Mindfulness involves continually bringing one's awareness back into the present moment.…
As you continue to focus on your breath, you will repeatedly find your attention drifting, as thoughts, feelings or sensations come into your awareness. That's totally OK and to be expected.
The goal is not to prevent yourself from having thoughts, feelings or sensations during mindfulness practice.
The goal is to notice the distractions that arise and then to gently turn your attention back to your breath.
When one goal is served by pursuing another goal, that means the effect of successfully achieving the latter goal is achieving the former goal as well.
When you know that one thing leads to the other, but deny that you care about “the other”, is that delusion or hypocrisy?
Yeah, yeah, I know: if the point is to be non-judgmental, non-reactive, and simply aware in the moment, focused on your breath, then interrupted thoughts or feelings may just be a casualty of the practice, and not, per the above quotation, an actual goal. Problem is, mindfulness is not just about meditation practice, it's a whole body of teaching. And that body of teaching devalues the playing out of thoughts and feelings. It's nonjudgmental in principle but not in practice.