Meditation instruction contains apparent contradictions: focus tightly, do not force; observe everything, choose one object. The pairs are corrective rather than inconsistent.
Instructions are corrections to specific errors
Most instruction is given in response to what a practitioner is currently doing wrong, which means it is aimed rather than general.
Told to a person whose attention is scattered, the instruction is to concentrate. Told to a person straining, the instruction is to ease off.
Both are recorded in the same texts and repeated in the same books, and stripped of who they were addressed to they read as opposites.
Stages require different emphases
Early practice usually needs stabilisation, which is why beginners are given a single object and told to return to it repeatedly.
Once attention is reasonably steady, continuing to grip it becomes the obstacle, and the instruction shifts toward allowing rather than directing.
A tradition that teaches both across a sequence will state both, and a reader encountering the material out of order finds the pair contradictory.
The vocabulary is doing unfamiliar work
Terms rendered as concentration, effort and letting go carry technical meanings inside a tradition that differ from their ordinary use.
Effort in this context often refers to an initial establishing rather than to continuous exertion, so instructions to make effort and to relax are not addressing the same thing.
Translation compounds this, since the same original term may be rendered by several English words across different translators and periods.
Traditions genuinely disagree as well
Not all of the tension is apparent. Traditions differ substantively on whether to work with a fixed object, on posture requirements and on the role of analysis.
These disagreements are old and have been argued explicitly within and between lineages rather than merely reflecting confusion.
Contemporary presentations that blend methods from several sources inherit the disagreements without the frameworks that made each coherent.
Why teachers still teach in person
Because the correct instruction depends on what a practitioner is doing at that moment, general instruction can only ever be approximate.
A teacher who can ask a few questions can determine which of the available instructions applies, which a book or a recording cannot.
This is why traditions place such weight on the interview and why the same teacher will tell two students in the same room opposite things without any inconsistency.