Talk On Letting Go Of (Do Nothing) Meditation

This talk explains why committing oneself to "Doing Nothing" does not imply losing one's edge in life. In fact, it implies the opposite. When one aligns oneself with what is here, one begins to surf the waves of life rather than getting dragged down by them. The result is a deep sense of peace. But in order to get there, it is necessary to let go of meditation itself. Ultimately, life itself becomes meditation. Then "the meditator" can finally be seen as another illusory identity to let go of.

Transcript

I admit in my project of radical honesty with myself and others,

The part of the reason for selecting this title was because I assumed it would be provocative and maybe I'll get some people to come and join because they want to see what the heck is this like letting go of doing nothing after being peddling doing nothing for months,

Right?

So,

But also it's more to the point,

This question of my relationship to this thing that I'm calling doing nothing and that I'm packaging as doing nothing and that I'm defending as doing nothing compared to other ways of being in the world.

There's a lot of fire within me,

There's a lot of energy trying to explore what does this mean,

What commitments does it require,

How seriously should one take this,

You know,

What is the relationship between this and other ways of being in the world and how do I answer questions because the more I go deeper into this meditation and spiritual sort of like teaching or training or mentorship or whatever one wants to call this,

Then you get questions,

You know,

You get questions and I want to honor the reasonableness of those questions such as how does shit get done when one does nothing?

Don't you lose your edge if you do nothing?

I mean,

Isn't it important to actually do something in the world to fight racism,

To,

You know,

Take steps to get what you want and what you believe in?

Right?

So,

These questions are very present,

I think,

In many people who come to this practice.

And I don't want to sidestep them or to give like cute pithy meditation answers that don't say anything,

But rather I want to confront them head on and this is one of my attempts to do that,

Very much a work in progress.

So,

Letting go of doing nothing.

So,

What do I mean by this?

Well,

First of all,

There's one potential meaning of this,

One is letting go of the things that are doing nothing versus doing something distinction.

I've talked about that here before.

First thing that happens when someone comes to me and I say explore doing nothing is they come back to me in a couple of weeks,

I don't know if I'm doing something or nothing.

They think that this is a sign of failure.

It's a sign of huge progress.

It's a sign of noticing that the distinction between something and nothing is not solid,

That it's porous,

That it's like water,

That it's dynamic,

That something and nothing are mutually interdependent,

That something and nothing fold into each other,

That they're empty,

Right?

So,

Let me get at this from a different direction.

I believe that a complete experience of doing something,

I don't know if I'm going to say complete experience of doing something,

I don't care what something is.

It can be skiing,

It can be writing,

It can be watching a movie,

It can be having a conversation with a good friend.

A complete experience of doing something,

An experience of becoming so absorbed in doing something that you lose yourself in what you are doing,

Right?

Isn't that what doing something in the extreme version is?

It's to do something so,

So,

So,

To commit yourself so much to doing something that you become absorbed in the activity.

Now,

You probably know where I'm going with this.

When you actually achieve a complete experience of doing something that you become so absorbed in what you're doing,

That experience is nearly indistinguishable from doing nothing.

From effortlessness.

This experience is what psychologists call flow.

Right?

So,

When you're skiing and you're going down the hill and you're flowing,

It's as if the skis are skiing you.

But you can't explain to others what you're doing,

You cannot break it down,

You're not thinking,

It's just happening.

Same thing when you're having a beautiful conversation with someone and you're just fully into the conversation,

You're not thinking the words,

The words are thinking themselves,

They're coming out.

Pay attention next time,

You're really engrossed in a conversation.

It happens on its own.

When you're really engrossed in a task,

In work,

In a book,

In a movie,

Time flies,

You're doing something,

You're watching,

That's a verb,

But it's effortless,

It's happening on its own.

Right?

So,

What does this reveal?

The emptiness of the something nothing distinction.

I shared a poem from the Spanish poet Juan Ramon Jimenez,

Oceans.

His boat struck something deep in the ocean.

And he says,

And it feels like nothing happened.

Nothing,

Silence,

Waves,

And then he asks,

Or has everything happened?

And now we're here quietly in the new life.

Has everything changed?

And I didn't even notice.

So,

This poem by the Spanish author who's not a meditator,

He was getting at the slipperiness of nothing versus everything.

Nothing happened,

Or did everything happen?

TS Eliot says,

The end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

What is he getting at?

Well,

Note that the end is the beginning,

The end is the start.

The duality breaks down.

Nisargadatta Maharaj,

Wisdom tells me I am nothing,

Love tells me I am everything,

Between the two my life flows.

Nothing and everything,

The two poles of the duality collapse.

Nothing is everything,

Everything is nothing.

That's what Juan Ramon Jimenez was saying in the poem,

Oceans.

It's what TS Eliot is saying,

Ends are beginnings,

Beginnings are ends.

You turn off the light in the bathroom,

Light ends,

Darkness begins.

Light ends,

Darkness begins.

Where's the ending?

Where's the beginning?

The dualities to solve.

So,

Letting go of doing nothing,

Stop obsessing over nothing.

Is this nothing or is this something?

How does something happen out of nothing?

Just do it.

Just,

You know,

If you want to do that practice,

Just be still,

Be quiet.

Don't talk.

See what happens.

Don't intellectualize yourself out of this paradox.

Live it.

And when you live it,

When you stop thinking about whether you're doing nothing or something and you just do,

You just be,

You're just here,

Suddenly at one,

There comes a point where it just doesn't matter if it's something or not.

It's sort of like silly,

Who cares?

Another way of getting at this,

But now we can go further.

If we let go of doing nothing,

We can actually let go of meditation,

Apropos of what Tori was saying.

So,

For example,

If what I'm doing,

And those of you who did the retreat with me know this,

I shared it when it happened during the retreat.

What's the difference between doing nothing as a form of meditation and resting or relaxing or opening your eyes in the morning for the first time and just lying there for 10 minutes?

What's the difference?

There is no difference.

Apropos of what Max was saying,

You know,

What's the difference?

The difference is the attitude that you bring to what you're doing.

You make meditation sacred,

Not because meditation is different from anything else that you do in life.

It's the attitude that you bring to the practice.

So,

Once you realize that doing nothing really is exactly the same thing as just sitting in your rocking chair and just rocking back and forth with no point,

Once you realize that it's the same thing,

Then you start questioning whether there's a difference between meditation and non-meditation.

And then you can take it a step further.

Letting go of doing nothing can be folded in into letting go of attachment to views.

And this includes crucially attachment to the freaking path.

Can we see that the path is like everything else,

Empty?

How else could it be?

Why would the path be full?

Why would the path have any sort of fixed permanent meaning?

Why should it?

Why should it?

You can let go of that attachment to the path,

Just like you can let go of the attachment to doing nothing or the attachment to meditating.

Because if meditating and non-meditating break down,

Then pathing or not pathing,

Walking or not walking,

Journeying or not journeying breaks down.

And then you can take it up a notch and let go of attachment to identity and to self.

So for example,

You can ask yourself,

Can you see how your identity gets caught up in the identity of the meditator?

What Alex was saying,

We give birth to the meditator by our practice,

And then we cling to the meditator.

So can you see how your identity is caught up in the identity of the meditator or the identity of the traveler on the path?

Now you become to a club.

Now you know the secret recipe to wake up all of these dumb idiots asleep.

We are in the process of waking up.

We are special.

You go to places like Reddit and you have all these dark night yogis,

Self-identified dark night yogis slogging through the dukkhananas.

It's an identity,

Is it not?

You're special.

You're not any kind of meditator anymore.

You have graduated to dark night meditator.

You're well on your way to Srimentari.

And then of course you have more identities,

The Srimentarant,

The arahant,

The teacher,

The student,

The bodhisattva.

I don't want to awaken.

I just want to awaken other people.

More labels.

I do nothing.

I am going to do some insight practice now.

Or she is a Zen practitioner or they meditate in the Dzogchen tradition.

Can we see how these labels,

Including,

Oh I do do nothing practice,

How these labels are also a form of attachment to things and practices that are at the end of the day empty.

So here's what I'm suggesting.

If you feel playful and curious,

That could happen.

And here I think this is sort of like a weird,

What I'm about to share is sort of a weird,

It's not a map because I'm totally unmappy.

It's not a map.

It's sort of like a list of shit that seems to follow from these letting goes.

So let me go through them.

So having seen the non-essential nature of do nothing practice,

Meaning do nothing,

Do something,

Do nothing,

Do something,

You know,

Whatever,

Right?

It doesn't really matter.

Having seen the non-essential nature of do nothing,

Having seen the empty nature of any kind of meditation,

Including do nothing,

And having seen that concerning yourself with labels generates attachment to both views and identities and understanding that meditator is a label and meditation is the label and do nothing is a label.

It doesn't describe something that exists out there for reals outside of our minds.

So having seen that concerning yourself with these labels generates attachment to views and identities,

One perhaps can finally seriously consider giving up the search for a practice.

One can finally seriously consider giving up a label for a practice and then having in some way giving up on the specialness of one's practice.

Oh,

I'm a dark knight yogi.

That's special.

Having given up on the specialness of one's practice,

One can then perhaps give them self permission to surrender to whatever is here without concern for whether one is being mindful or unmindful,

Whether one is doing something or nothing,

Whether you're selfing or not selfing,

Even whether you're meditating or not meditating,

Tori.

Having surrendered to what is,

One is finally free to do nothing simply because it resonates with our soul rather than because it leads somewhere,

Whether it's to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,

The promised land,

The awakened state,

Or Nibbāna.

One can finally give oneself permission to meditate because it's soulful,

Not because it gets you anything.

So having given ourselves to the do nothing practice because it speaks to us rather than because we're trying to get something,

Including pleasant experiences,

We are then able to unlock the beauty and soulfulness of flowing with life's momentum rather than resisting it,

Which is what Max was so beautifully talking about with the kara neutral and the gas pedal.

We keep stepping on the gas and then we think that we're getting somewhere,

But we're not getting anywhere.

It's the karīsan neutral and it's going on at its own speed and we think we're doing it,

But we're not doing it.

It's unneutral.

When we realize that we're not doing it,

Then we can see the beauty and the soulfulness of flowing with life's momentum instead of resisting it.

And then having perceived the soulfulness and the texture and the hidden depths of doing nothing for its own sake,

Then it becomes clear that there is little reason to do nothing practice unless it is soulful to you.

And what I mean by soulful is it speaks to you.

So it doesn't mean to clarify apropos of what Tori was asking.

It doesn't mean enjoying it.

No.

Most of the things that are worth doing in life are not always enjoyable.

Friendships,

Not always enjoyable.

Even the great ones.

Partnerships with other human beings,

Life partners,

Spouses,

Significant others.

Certainly not always enjoyable.

Worth it?

Yes.

Why?

Because it's soulful.

It speaks to you.

It nourishes your soul.

You need the human connection and you're willing to pay the price of the suffering,

Of the dukkha that comes along with it.

Chris was saying Luis versus Reddit.

Well,

You know,

Luis versus Reddit is easy.

Luis believes that dukkha is written into the source code of the universe and that it's childish to get rid of dukkha because it's not possible.

Or if it's possible,

Then your life no longer looks like a human life.

It looks like someone living in a cave.

Not the life that I want to live.

And Reddit and the Buddha,

You know,

Are read to mean that,

You know,

We can fully end suffering.

And I think that's bullshit.

That's the difference.

I think that's the difference.

I think that suffering is part of life.

And I think that if you get rid of it,

You end up being a soulless person,

Frankly.

That's my view.

So for me,

Essentially everything worth doing is unpleasant at some level.

And that's part of its beauty.

That's part of its beauty.

If it were easy and always beautiful,

You would get bored in 10 minutes.

What's beautiful is that doing nothing like friendships are sometimes incredibly rewarding and some things incredibly frustrating.

And that texture is what adds spice to life.

So if this practice,

This one or any other,

Is not resonant with you,

If it's not beautiful,

Or if you're unable to see the potential for beauty in this practice,

For soulfulness,

Then you should surely let go of this practice.

Because it is only when doing nothing is soulful to you,

Or any other meditation practice,

That the practice can be taken for its own sake rather than to get something out of it.

And it is only when doing something becomes soulful that it can be done out of joy,

Out of a place of joy and beauty,

Rather than out of a place of duty or strategy.

And then having been taken doing nothing for its own sake,

Rather than to get something out of it,

Then and only then can you finally begin to stop caring about whether what you're truly doing is something or nothing,

Whether you can actually improve by doing nothing or not improve,

Whether you lose your edge by doing nothing or not lose it.

Having realized that doing nothing gets us nowhere,

Literally,

Because the car is on neutral,

As Max said,

We're finally able to let go of doing nothing.

Because the car is on neutral.

It doesn't matter if I'm doing nothing,

Or if I'm doing TMI,

Or if I'm counting sheep at night.

So having let go of doing nothing,

Then one can give oneself permission to let go of meditation in general.

And letting go of meditation in general,

You can come to see that there isn't necessarily a need to meditate in the first place.

And let me try and explain why I think this.

I think it is because it is precisely the artificial distinction between meditating and not meditating that needed to be overcome in the first place.

The problem is that when we came into this practice,

We thought that we could meditate our way out of Dukkha.

And what the practice reveals is that you cannot.

And once the practice reveals that you cannot,

Then you realize that meditating or not meditating,

It's the same thing.

Dukkha is here.

So what you,

What it,

Under the,

According to this way of meditating,

What you came into the practice looking for,

What needed to be overcome,

Is the idea that you needed to look for something in the first place.

So having overcome then the distinction,

So you come into this practice believing that there's a distinction between being here and being there.

You want to be here all the time.

But here's the secret.

You're always here.

You've always been here.

You will always be here.

Where the fuck are you going to be?

You're going to be,

You're always here.

Say no,

No,

No,

No,

But I'm not here because I'm not paying attention to you.

I'm in my head.

Well,

So you're here.

Your head's here.

Where is it?

Is it in Mars?

Your head's here.

When you say you want,

As I said before,

When you say you want to be here and not there,

You don't really mean that.

What you mean is you want to be here,

Non-dutchmentally,

Kindly,

Mindful,

Perfectly aware,

Witness consciousness.

That's what you want to be here.

But that's not what's on the menu.

What's on the menu is here with the dark thought,

With the malice,

With the distraction.

That's what T.

S.

Eliot saw,

That the end of all exploring is to come back to where you started and know the place for the first time.

It's to come back to meditation,

Which is where we started,

And see through it for the first time.

Ah,

I can get attached to this too.

Meditation too is a crutch.

So having overcome the distinction between meditating and not meditating,

You realize that you are meditating all the time,

Whether you want to or not.

That was a big insight I had when I was taking my bath and I was doing nothing.

And I said to myself,

Fuck,

I need to meditate.

And then I said,

Why?

You're going to do nothing.

It's what you're doing right now.

And it was like,

Oh,

My gosh,

I'm always meditating.

So to be more precise,

What you realize is that life is always meditating you.

Life will always meditate you.

Life has always meditated you.

And having realized that life inevitably meditates you,

That you don't need to meditate,

But that meditation is more of this splitting up the world into things,

Meditation and non-meditation.

So having realized that life inevitably meditates you,

And that when you say you're not meditating or you're not mindful,

What you really mean is that you're not having the kind of experience that you want to have.

But that's a childish thing that we were trying to overcome in the first place.

So when you finally realize that life inevitably meditates you,

Then the search can finally be called off.

The search for X,

Peace,

Equanimity,

Stream entry,

Our handship,

End of Dukkha,

Call of the search.

And having called off the search,

Having realized that there's no there there,

There's no end of suffering at the end,

Because suffering is part of this.

There's no pot of gold.

There's just this,

The cosmic joke.

There's just this.

And then having realized that there's just this and there's no fireworks,

And there's no like being one with the universe and astral projection to visit,

Alpha centauri.

Then finally calling off the search,

You're finally,

Finally free to lose yourself in life.

Not in the fireworks and the nirvana,

But in life.

In the embrace of a loved one,

In a sip of a glass of water,

In the rain hitting against the window pane,

In the breeze caressing your cheeks.

That's it.

So having called off the search for this sublime thing that doesn't exist,

You're finally free to lose yourself in this life,

To do what you can to answer Mary Oliver's call.

What are you going to do with this one wild and precious life?

And then one is finally able to,

In the words of poet Martha Pozzlewhite,

As we heard at the end of the guided meditation,

To give yourselves to this world so worthy of rescue,

To come back to the world and just live.

All right,

So I will end there.

Reviews

So interesting. It speaks to me, with trepidation. I guess, I'm aware of how my own thinking, judgements, perceptions cause me suffering and untruth. In the words of Emmett Fox, "I choose what I think". How does that fit in here?

Loved it! Great talk :)

Really enjoyed this talk, thank you 👏

Thank you 😊

This guy is SMART!