"western people sometimes come in wanting things to be intense, clinical and goal-oriented." That describes me exactly. I spent forever look for a "quantified

"western people sometimes come in wanting things to be intense, clinical and goal-oriented." That describes me exactly. I spent forever look for a "quantified meditation" course. I even kept a mediation journal where I could track how many times I lost track of my breath in a 5 minute session. I started out around 50 and was desperately trying to get to 0. I even used an app that counts taps, that I would rest under my finger, so that I could mark each failure as quickly and easily as possible. Without trying to "remember" the count of failures because it would distract me from the breath. I felt that if I could get to 0, that I wouldn't be ready for enlightenment, but I would at least achieve ACCESS CONCENTRATION and be able to enter the stream. At that point, it could become a spiritual practice, but I wanted to develop sufficient concentration abilities and conquer my ADHD before thinking too much about what mediation was actually for. It's been really hard for me to let go of the idea that my meditation needs a score to track my progress.