Ashtavakra Gita

Wherever the mind goes, know it to be only your own self appearing there, and quietness will follow at once

Reframes every mental wandering, without exception, as the self showing up in a new disguise, which removes the need to fight or redirect thought.

This teaching, closely following the opening of chapter 16, offers a specific technique despite the chapter's suspicion of technique generally: instead of trying to stop the mind from moving, recognize that wherever it moves is still only the self appearing there, in the form of a thought, a memory, a plan. Because there is nowhere thought can go that is actually outside the self, the usual battle between a wandering mind and a disciplined one becomes unnecessary — the wandering was never a departure. The chapter's claim is that quietness follows immediately from this recognition, not from a suppression campaign, because the struggle itself was fueled by the false premise that thought and self were two separate things in competition.

Ashtavakra Gita