You sit to meditate. Thoughts arrive. You start sorting. This is a productive thought, I'll keep that. This is an anxious thought, I should release that. This is a memory I shouldn't dwell on. This is a mantra, that's good. The sorting is constant. The sorting feels like the practice. K called this the opposite of attention. The sorter is the fragment. The sorting is the obstacle.
K's alternative was choiceless awareness. Watching without preference. Not for what should be. Just for what is. No filtering. No labeling as good or bad. No pursuing some thoughts and pushing away others. Whatever shows up, shows up. The watching takes it in. The watching has no agenda about what it sees. The taking-in is the practice.
Choice produces the fragment. Every preference, every should be, every push or pull, recreates the fragment doing the choosing. Drop the choice and the chooser has nothing to do. The fragment loses its work. What's left is awareness without an agenda. The room. The sound. The thought, with no judgment attached. The judgment was always the disease.
The body of choiceless awareness is even. No leaning forward or back. No clenching at the bad thought. No grasping at the good one. Each thing arrives. Each thing passes. The body is in the middle of it without doing anything to it. The breath continues. There's spaciousness. Nothing is excluded. Nothing is preferred. The fragment isn't finding work.
Choiceless awareness is watching without preference. The choosing was the work of the fragment. Drop the choosing and the fragment has nothing to do. What's left isn't a meditator achieving a state. It's awareness without an agenda. K thought this was the closest thing to a practice he could point to. Even calling it a practice was probably too much.