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People say, "observe thoughts while meditating". How can one observe thoughts without paying attention to them?

Change that last part to ‘paying continued attention to them,’ and you’ll have your answer

You are correct, you cannot observe a thought without at least noticing it’s existence & possibly its content for a moment. So technically, you ‘paid attention’ for a moment.

Paying continued attention - following the thought, being interested in it’s content, feeling you must stay with that particular thought, focus on it, ponder it, ruminate about it - is all you need to let go of. Like laying in a field watching all the puffy different-shaped clouds go by. You notice them, and even noticed their differences, so technically you ‘paid attention’ to each one of them. But you weren’t interested in their content, their ‘meaning,’ and you didn’t grant any importance to any cloud. They were all neutral, and you just let each one pass on.

Thoughts arise & fall on their own; ‘you’ do not make them arise. If no thoughts, feelings or body sensations were arising (yet you were still conscious,) you would just be the observer, observing nothing In particular. You would be the raw Awareness, and in the absence of thoughts, Awareness tends to automatically turn inward to focus on…itself. This is the beginning of true insight in meditation, where Awareness recognizes itself and that It is ‘your’ true identity…and always was.

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