To meditate on something is to let it fill your mind. All your attention is on that one thing. If there is a thought, it’ll be about that one thing. As proficiency grows, there’ll be fewer and fewer individual thoughts during meditation. It becomes an unbroken flow of attention towards the chosen object of meditation.
There’s a few implications from this definition. First, attention and thought are treated as different experiences. You can pay attention to something without necessarily thinking about it. Example: driving. During the journey, you pay attention to the road but rarely think about the movements and decisions. Most thought is on the rest of the day, or other things important in life at the time. Here’s another example: say you’re on a course, or in a meeting, and it’s a bit boring. You know you need to pay attention, but your mind keeps wandering onto thoughts of what to do later, or other more interesting stuff. Clearly, attention and thinking really are different.
