The practice of allowing thoughts to come and go freely and not attaching to them is an ancient practice. It goes right back to the origins of Buddhism.
But if we think the aim of this practice is just to make ‘the mind’ still, to make ‘consciousness’ empty; then our practice lacks compassion.
It’s for this reason that when Buddhism went to China and the Chinese truly made it their own, they changed the emphasis from emptiness to suchness. The unstatable state when we are no longer conceptually grasping experience, fabricating self and object, when everything is vivid and whole.
Not Nothing, but nothing that can be described. No-thing, because Everything.