When we meditate, a grasping attitude can spoil our meditation or dilute its benefits. Even if our meditation uses positive images, words, felling, and belief, we can be too forceful in how we apply these qualities of the mind. We can start craving the mental image or object, straining after its positive qualities, or wanting the meditation to be better or more wonderful than it is. Meditation can sometimes take on possessive overtones, in which we think about "how much I can get from this." We start feeling obsessed with results. Or we strain too hard. For example, some people look at a rose and enjoy its beauty openly and naturally. But if we grasp at its beauty in our minds, almost as if we were attacking it with our intellects or wanting to possess its beauty, then we are trying too hard.
Excerpted from: Boundless Healing, Tulku Thondup, Shambhala Publications