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Now I know why I sucks in Meditation!

I have been meditating for a while now, more than 2 years but I have not progressed much, even though I tried to meditate an hour a day for a fair period. The image is what I looked like with the question "WHY AM I GETTING BETTER IN MEDITATION?"



Then recently, I just noticed my issue. I was not following the simple instructions given by my master, that is simply:

"Concentrate on your breath. In and out. Focus on the area below your nose on the sensation that comes with the breath." 

Such a simple instruction and I took more than 2 years to understand how I should meditate. I also found better insight as I was looking at videos on the same topic by Ven. Guan Cheng (found in Youtube):

[English] Nine Stages of Training the Mind (九心住) Lecture by Ven. Guan Cheng

I will list out the 9 stages of training the Mind:
1. Mental Placement, or Fixing the Mind
2. Continuous Placement, or Fixation with some Continuity
3. Patch Placement, or Correcting
4. Close Placement or Good Fixation
5. Taming, Subduing, or Becoming Disciplined
6. Pacification or Becoming Peaceful
7. Complete Pacification
8. One-Pointed Attention
9. Balance Placement

If you prefer to read instead of watching the video, can take a look at the website below (go further down to look for the "[The Nine Stages of Samatha Meditation]" section :

The issues that I noticed recently:

1. My mind still wanders off when I am counting my breath. (I know I suck at this.) This is the focus that I cannot maintain which I was surprised as I can focus on stuff when I wanted to. Maybe it was my karma that is in the way of my meditation but I will still work on it. I still go back to my breath when I detected my mind wandering but so far the detection needs to improve. I am now trying to count in and out-breath instead of counting to see if it works better for me. 

2. I was trying to do the half-lotus sitting position (I tried before but not successful and I also realized I have been doing quart-lotus sitting position instead of half-lotus) but so far not particularly successful but at least the leg pains have dropped quite a bit as I meditate an hour at least a day. 

The good thing is that I have noticed my mistakes and by knowing, I can try to correct them and hopefully I can do better next time I meditate.
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