DO NOTHING

DO NOTHING (OR AT LEAST SLOW DOWN AND DO A LITTLE LESS)

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DO NOTHING (OR AT LEAST SLOW DOWN AND DO A LITTLE LESS) What is it like to do nothing? I mean, really do nothing, nothing at all.

Not ruminating on what has happened in the past. Not being anxious imagining what might happen in the future. Not running a commentary about what is happening in the present. No analyzing, explaining, justifying, or controlling what you experience. Just doing nothing!

Stop and take a look at your life. See how much of your life is a struggle to make your life different from what it is. The house is too messy, the children are too noisy, you have too much work, not enough work, or the wrong kind of work. Your relationships (or lack of) are not working out as you had expected they should. So, perhaps you run around constantly cleaning or just giving up on the mess, yell at the kids, complain about the job or disappear into addictive behaviors to numb the disappointment, and blame your partner for your suffering. The more you try to make life conform to your desires, the more you struggle, and the more you suffer. The only way out of this vicious cycle is to accept reality as it is and yourself as you are; to accept what arises. One place to start having that experience is simply to do nothing. Paradoxically, such simple acceptance opens up a perspective on life that you may have never imagined.

I have done many spiritual/meditation/yoga retreats over a period of about 50+ years, including months at a time in India, Canada, Washington, Oregon, Illinois and elsewhere. At most of these retreats there was no communication with the outside world. The days were full. At some retreats we started meditation sessions before sunrise and ended late in the evening. At others there were daily and weekly rituals and occasionally it would be up to the guests to do much of the cooking and cleanup. Depending on the tradition, we would practice different meditation methods, usually with a daily structure of periods for practice, study, and Satsang. With so much to do and learn, there was very little free time.

A number of years ago, I attended a completely different retreat on Hood Canal in Washington State. The only meditation instruction was “Do nothing.” “That’s it?” I thought. “I came here to do nothing for 7 days?” We met for meals, one teaching session in the morning, and one group practice session in the evening. We had a meditation interview every few days. The rest of the time was our own. Cell phones, computers, radios, TVs, and all the usual means of communication weren’t available. With no specific disciplines or practices to learn, no commentaries to study, no preparations for rituals, or even cooking or cleaning, I had literally nothing to do except 2

sit, lie down, or go for a walk.

My tent was on a hillside that looked over a magnificent view of treecovered hills, magnificent waterway, and a range of mountains just visible on the horizon. The silence was highlighted by the songs of birds, the wind in the trees, two days of rain, and the sounds of animals in the dark. Every day the sun rose, crossed the sky, and set, with the moon and stars dancing in the night. “What a relief,” I thought, “plenty of time to rest and meditate.” But I soon found that doing absolutely nothing, not even entertaining myself, wasn’t so easy.

Ajahn Chah, one of the great Thai Buddhist teachers of the 20th century, gave the following practice instruction: Put a chair in the middle of a room.

Sit in the chair.

See who comes to visit.

One has to be careful with such instructions. I once gave this instruction to a woman who came to see me for counseling and was surprised to learn that she put a chair in the center of her living room, sat in it, and waited for people to visit. When nobody knocked on her door, she decided that meditation wasn’t for her. Ajahn Chah was, of course, speaking poetically. Nevertheless, in some sense, all of us are like this woman, waiting for something to happen.

There has been no shortage of visitors for me! At first, I was visited by calmness, peace, a deep sense of relaxation, joy, and happiness. “How wonderful! “ I thought. “Certainly, I’m now on the path of wisdom and insight.” After all, so many spiritual teachers had assured me that as the mind became still, it naturally became clear.

The visitors continued, but over time with a difference. The more deeply I relaxed, the more I became aware of stuff inside me, stuff stored in rusting boxes in the mildewed basement of my memories.

Pleasant and unpleasant, stories about my life, old desires, boredom, and a sense of fears of the future came knocking on the door. I kept pushing these visitors away, or analyzing them, trying to understand them so I could be free of them. I found myself back in the old struggle, trying to control my experience. The visitors became more disturbing, more demanding of attention. Some even harbored deep disappointment, self-doubt, unfulfilled longing, or drugged me into a dull lethargy. These visitors from my unconscious mind seemed to have no appreciation or awareness of the beauty and peace around me. I began to lose hope that I would achieve anything at this retreat.

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Hope is the one last quality left in Pandora’s box, and it is not clear whether it is a blessing or a curse. T. S. Eliot, in Four Quartets, writes: I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without hope? Was I going to sit on the side of this mountain and have nothing to show for it? A consistent theme in many spiritual teachings is “No hope, no fear.” What does that mean?

For most of us, hope and fear arise as reactions to specific people, places, things, situations, ideas, rumors about possible promotions or layoffs, discomfort in our body, lost relationships, illness, and so on. I feared an acute disappointment if, at the end of the retreat, all I had done was sit on a mountain and gaze into space . Slowly, I realized that to do nothing meant I had to let go of attached beliefs that I was just beginning to sense, the belief, for instance, that I had to achieve something.

Most of us might be happy to do nothing for a few minutes, perhaps even an hour or two. But to do nothing, to produce nothing, to achieve nothing for a day, a week, or a month seems like an unthinkable struggle.

I have often thought of the many extraordinary spiritual teachers I’ve either met or studied, who had spent years and decades in mountain retreats in India, Tibet, Southeast Asia, Japan, China, British Columbia, California, and Oregon. The depth to which these teachers, and many others like them, had been able to let go of any concerns about name and fame, success or failure has been a continuing comfort and inspiration.

A brief practice of “Do Nothing” can allow you to experience a different space and time rooted in silence. When everything is quiet and suddenly there is a noise, we ordinarily say the silence was shattered.

But it’s more accurate to say that we forget the silence and listen only to the sound. Where we place our attention is what we become.

A shift in the sense of time passage is another unique experience to the practice of “Do Nothing.” Immanuel Kant once said that Time is the medium in which we perceive thoughts, just as space is the medium in which we perceive objects.

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Regrets and ruminations about the past, fears and anxiety of the future, hopes, boredom, and joys in the present, are all thoughts that come and go in time. When you allow yourself to Do Nothing there is nothing to do with those thoughts, no action necessary. They simply come and go like the mist that rises from the ground in the early morning, only to vanish as the day progresses .

Like the woman in the chair who waited for someone to knock on her door, you might find that you have been waiting for something to happen, some experience or insight that would make sense of everything, put all the ghosts to rest, and silence the persistent voices in your mind. There is nothing to do but wait with gentle attention to simply experience whatever comes through the door. And you have a choice between two very different ways to meet what arises in that experience.

The first is to interpret our experiences in life according to a set of deeply held assumptions expressed through intellectual explorations, narratives, and stories. You may or may not be conscious of the underlying assumptions, but they are there. These assumptions are rarely ever questioned. They are taken as fundamental. A selfreinforcing condition develops that results in a closed system in which everything is explained, the mystery of life is dismissed, new ideas, perspectives, or approaches to life cannot enter, and certain questions can never be asked.

The second way is to open and be willing to receive and not control, whatever arises. To accept reality as it is and yourself as you are. In this second way you gently allow your experience to challenge your assumptions. Here, there are some things that cannot be explained.

They can only be experienced. As Mavlana Jalaladin Rumi so beautifully writes: This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Early on in that Hood Canal retreat, when difficult narratives or stories arose, I would analyze them, applying my intellect to try to understand all the what, where, when, and why that created these narratives. I thought this would help to resolve them and then I wouldn’t have to be bothered by them. Sometimes I would be completely swallowed by emotions and sensations and only come to my senses a few minutes— 5

or a few hours—later. Frequently, I just didn’t want to continue to struggle with what was arising, so I’d shut it down, go for a walk, or get busy with something. If I couldn’t quickly control whatever arose, I would start doing something.

Gradually, as the retreat progressed, I began to relax, bringing a sense of curiosity, appreciation, and love to whatever arose in my environment or my mind. The most difficult experience was overcoming the many judgment narratives about simply staring into space and simply observing the sky, the silence, time, or sensations in my own body. I recognized that the only way I could do nothing was, well, to do nothing. I had to receive whatever arose, experience it, and not do anything with it. I began to understand the message from so many of my spiritual teachers: Just rest and recognize.

If you wish to be free of suffering, to be free of struggle, then the way to look at the experiences of your life is to know “There is no enemy” and stop opposing what arises in those experiences. It is difficult and challenging but it’s possible. And the easiest way to learn to do that is to simply, at least for a short period of time, practice doing nothing.

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