"Isn't observing the trigger and not reacting to it the same as ignoring it?" > Imagine, a bully on the playground. He bullies you. How do you solve it? The more you react to him or trying to convince him, the more he bullies you. Even if your arguments are right and you are in the right, the bully won't stop. To solve this: a) You can distract yourself to ignore the bully. Now the bully is gone from your mind but you don't learn from it, you don't become resilient against the bully b) you can observe the bully without judgement, without reacting to him. So the bully is still there in your mind (because you didn't ignore him), you just don't care anymore and you don't give it a meaning. Just notice the bully without convincing that you are right. If you do this and stop reacting to the bully, then you stop making the bully important in your mind and the bully in your mind doesn't have any power anymore and the bully loses its meaning. Now you learned to not react and by doing so you 'let go'. Engaging to the bully is REACTING/responding, so you need to do the opposite