I would not be suprised if this approach backfired to a certain degree as it would just increase the amount of thoughts, thus distractions. Most philosophers j

I would not be suprised if this approach backfired to a certain degree as it would just increase the amount of thoughts, thus distractions. Most philosophers just end up with even more questions than they started with and end up dying miserable and frustrated. This is a stark contrast to, for example, Krishnamurti's teaching which could be summed up as "observe your thoughts without trying to analyze them, just sit still and observe them, and notice that each time you try to analyze the thoughts it's the thoughts trying to analyze thoughts, so you will just spin in circles: so just observe, and something magical will happen.", which eventually leads to some kind of an eureka moment in the mind which magicaly resolves this issue and this thought doesn't appear again. So now this is really not a thought anymore but a instinctive understanding. Eg first you had to thought and concentrate when you walk, but now you never think about walking, it's instinctive. The more you focus on walking down the stairs the more likely it is that you will trip. The author's mistake, from eg Krishnamurti's perspective, is that he belives that thoughts are good: but the best understandings that you have, the things that you do best, you don't actually think about at all. So this more eastern style "no mind" philosophy tries to move one away from these schizophrenic thoughts that constantly invade one's mind and towards "understanding" (cessation of intrusive thoughts by understaing what causes a thought to intrude the "stream of consiousness" and disturb the human).