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I feel nothing when I meditate. Is that normal?

You say you feel nothing, as if nothing were a failure. Look closer. Who is noticing the nothing? Something is there to report it. Most people come to the cushion expecting a reward: calm, warmth, some light behind the eyes. When it doesn't arrive, they call what's left empty and decide they are doing it wrong. But nothing is not nothing. There is breath going in and out. There is the weight of your body on the floor. There is a faint boredom, maybe a little disappointment. That is plenty. You don't need a special feeling to sit; you only need to stop asking the sitting to pay you. Next time you sit, when the thought comes that nothing is happening, name one thing that is happening, the breath, the knee, the sound outside, and stay with it.

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