Right Attitude in Meditation

Last Updated on October 2, 2026 by Matthew Sockolov

When learning how to meditate or practicing meditation, we often focus on technique. We learn what to do in meditation.. Technique matters, but how we meditate is just as important as what we do in meditation. You might practice mindfulness of the body following the technique correctly, but carry a lot of tension, expectation, judgement, and desire in the mind.

Looking at right attitude helps us look at these aspects of how we meditate. Over the past few years, I’ve come to find in my own practice that this is perhaps even more important than the technique. After years of practice, I found that the way I was meditating was actually full of tension, expectations, and defilements. We’ll go through what exactly right attitude is, why it matters, how to incorporate it, and offer some practical tips.

What is Right Attitude?

This is a teaching that came to me from Sadayaw U Tejaniya. Right attitude is the how of our practice. How are we paying attention, and how is the observing mind? It’s an aspect of practice many of us never pay any attention to, but an important piece nonetheless.

Right attitude involves practicing with attention that is relaxed, interested, kind, and accepting. With right attitude, we meet every experience with curiosity and interest. Even if there is something unpleasant present, right attitude helps us continue to pay attention with mindfulness and clear comprehension rather than judging or resisting.

There are several main points when it comes to right attitude:

• Relaxation and Tension – This is perhaps the core of right attitude. Right attitude means practicing in a way that is relaxed. When we practice with tension, we are not able to truly see clearly or cultivate deep understanding. A big piece of right attitude is simply relaxing with our practice, whatever it may be. Tension can arise quite easily in meditation, often related to the third item on this list in my personal experience!
• Interest and Investigation – Right attitude involves interest and actively investigating. Rather than resisting certain experiences, we continue to engage with curiosity. This is especially true when it comes to the unpleasant experiences and neutral ones. Whatever arises, we keep the attitude of curiosity, interest, and investigation.
• Wanting and Expectations – This was a big piece of right attitude that impacted my practice. When we meditate, we are to let go of expectations or clinging to specific outcomes. How often do you spend time in meditation trying to get to a certain mental state or a specific experience? Right attitude is meeting the mind wherever it is, and letting go of any clinging to what we should be feeling.
• Kindness and Gentleness – With right attitude, we practice in a way that is kind and gentle. The harshness we often experience toward the mind is rooted in clinging and craving. Instead, right attitude means being friendly toward the mind, even when it doesn’t do what we want it to do.
• Awareness of Awareness – Regardless of what we are observing or doing in meditation, we retain some awareness of awareness. That is, we continue to check in with this right attitude and how we are paying attention. Even when watching the breath, the body, or whatever else, we recognize the flavor of awareness. Is there tension, craving, harshness, etc. in the mind?

Why Right Attitude Matters

Right attitude won’t magically “fix” your meditation practice. But as we begin to cultivate this more wholesome attitude in meditation, we do find a few benefits. Perhaps most notable is the ability to meet difficult experiences with more clarity, equanimity, and presence. This can deeply transform the way we relate to unpleasant and difficult experiences. As we’re able to meet these experiences with a better attitude, we actually can learn from them rather than see them as distractions or problems.

We also let go of striving in favor of curiosity and investigation. With right attitude, we aren’t stuck in the ideas of what meditation should be. If the mind is calm or active, we still practice. And we do so with the interest of right attitude. This release from striving and clinging helps us once again see more clearly and learn from experience rather than get stuck in what we want the experience to be.

The Canonical Foundation

“Right attitude” isn’t a traditional Buddhist teaching. It’s not found on the Noble Eightfold Path. It comes from later teachers, like Tejaniya. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have canonical foundations. The refrain of the Satipatthana Sutta says to practice without greed and aversion. This points toward the right attitude of practicing without clinging to outcomes or resisting with tension.

Some suttas mention wise attention, or yoniso manasikara. This is actually what Tejaniya translates as right attitude. The Sabbasava Sutta contrasts wise and unwise attention, noting that appropriate attention is attention that leads to liberation. Unwise attention is attention that cultivates self-view, doubt, and grasping. The point is that our attention can determine what we are cultivating.

The Ahara Sutta covers wise and unwise attention a bit more, focusing on the five hindrances and the seven factors of awakening. It’s presented in the form of food and feeding. It’s an interesting sutta I highly recommend reading. Part of the teaching here is that how we pay attention to the hindrances or factors of awakening determines how we feed or cut off these qualities.

There are also of course many suttas that touch on relaxed effort (such as the Sona Sutta on the middle way), the hindrances as objects not enemies, cultivating interest and investigation, and kindness toward ourselves. Although these suttas don’t directly use the term, we can think of right attitude as the compilation of these different qualities.

Before, During, and After Meditation

One way that I check in with right attitude is by incorporating some mindfulness of the attitude before meditation, during meditation, and after meditation.

Before meditation, you might check in with your intentions and attitude. Is there something you are expecting from this meditation period? Maybe there’s something you want to make happen. Just noticing these expectations and little points of clinging brings them into our awareness.

During meditation, you can ask similar questions. Check in with your level of relaxation and straining. Notice when interest is present or not. Maybe you can see how the mind tries to control experience. A simple question I often ask myself is “How is the mind relating to this experience?”

And after meditation, you can once again check in. My favorite way to do this is to ask what I learned about my mind during this meditation. This is in direct contrast with the habitual question of whether it was a good or bad meditation. Instead of judging our practice as black or white, we can cultivate right attitude by focusing on what matters.

Right Attitude vs. Wrong Attitude

In some Tejaniya books and talk, he gives examples of right and wrong attitude. I always found this useful, so I put together this table below comparing right and wrong attitude. This isn’t to judge yourself or beat yourself up. The intention is simply to make it clear.

Tips for Cultivating Right Attitude

Just by reading this page and considering attitude in meditation, you’ll begin to notice the attitude. Here are a few pragmatic tips you can use in your meditation practice and daily life to help cultivate right attitude.

Be Interested

This is one of the simplest and clearest things you can do to begin cultivating right attitude. Try to bring interest to your practice. When the mind is bored or growign aversive to an experience, that is the perfect time to pause and bring some interest into the picture. This can help change the attitude from dull and disinterested to engaged and curious. Below is a recording from our Thursday Morning Meditation in which we discuss curiosity and interest a bit more.

Let Go of Expectations and Control

Practice with what’s in front of you and let go of the clinging to any outcomes or states. Learning to let go of the outcome can be difficult. You might notice when you’re contracting around getting a certain result in your practice. Remember that all you can do is practice with right attitude, work with what’s in front of you, and trust in wisdom to arise. We have an episode of our podcast below in which we cover creating conditions for wisdom to arise. I find this a useful teaching in letting go of the expectation or clinging to wisdom in meditation.

Make Space for Unpleasant and Neutral Experiences

We naturally like pleasant experiences and may fall into craving. But what about the unpleasant and neutral ones? With the unpleasant or difficult experiences, we can lose right attitude quickly. With right attitude, we can pause and look at the unpleasant experience with curiosity. What can we learn from the experience? Can you be interested in learning how the mind works here? If it’s really unpleasant, we can bring in some karuna, or compassion.

Neutral experiences may seem boring or inherently uninteresting. I sometimes find myself in meditation feeling like I’m waiting for something to happen. Instead of being bored with the neutral experiences, ask what the mind is doing in this moment. Is it looking for more stimulation? Or maybe there’s aversion to the lack of stimulation.

Recognize Tension and Straining

One of the things I often work with my mindfulness coaching students on is recognizing the tension and straining. It’s a common experience many people don’t even realize is happening. When there’s tension in the mind, it often comes from straining. It may be straining to concentrate, straining to achieve some peaceful mental state, or some resistance arising in response to something uncomfortable. The straining and tension can be our indicator that there isn’t right attitude.

Steer Clear of Judgement

It can be useful to watch for judgement in our practice. When we find ourselves labeling things as good and bad, or even our overall practice as good or bad, it’s often a sign of wrong attitude. Instead of seeing things as good or bad, we can look to see what we might learn from the experience. Judging is often rooted in wrong attitude, so try to leave the judging behind.

Relax

Relax! This goes with the tip to not strain, but try to relax during meditation. Be gentle in the body, and watch for straining in the mind as well. I find that starting my meditation period with a period of metta, or loving-kindness, is extremely helpful. Be gentle and kind in your practice, and find a way to relax in meditation.