"Do Nothing" Meditation

[Maisy]

The way I think of it is we all have a certain identity. A "person" we are. This person runs off thought. The talking in our heads. We believe we are both the producer of thoughts and the listener of thoughts. We believe it is us. This person we believe we are is a doer. It is always doing.

It reads forums. It has interests. It has goals. It wants and seeks various things. It has history, a past, and a future. It believes itself to be various things. To have certain qualities.

It would be what does nothing meditation. It is the doer. It's the same person who gets mad or frustrated and who experiences every single emotion a human can experience. It's the "me" we live with when we are awake and not sleeping.

It's like our arm. It is always here. From the moment we wake up until we go to bed. But I think we can be free of this doer. Maybe for brief moments or maybe all day. It's up to us.

The how to be free of it can't really be talked about. Because it has nothing to do with an idea. It's an experience one can have or not have. No words or ideas can lead to it as all words and ideas belong to the person.

It's not being a person or a doer. It's just being. "Do nothing meditation" is a great idea but I think two things can come from such an idea. The most common result I think is the "person" does it. So really nothing changes at all. The same person will go buy a coffee and watch tv later. Maybe dislike something they experience that day.

But then somebody else will understand "not doing" cannot involve a goal or a person or a doer. "Trying" to achieve something, "doing" something, is not "not doing." If some effort is involved, it is not "not doing."

How does one really do it? I think one just drops the "one" that is the person put together by the mind. But this is not based on any idea. We always are aware once we wake up in the morning. Most time this awareness incudes our "person" and mind. The never ending talking in our heads. I would guess most have no idea our attention does not have to be in this endless mind or thought or inside talking as one's frame of reference in each moment is this talking. Every moment is interpreted though this internal talking.

But I think one potentially can put the attention elsewhere. Then the experience of now changes. To me, that is not doing meditation. I think it's based on experiential knowledge. It's learned.

One has to experience or see or know the value of not being a person. In a way we are still a person, because really the "person" is us as awareness. We never cease to exist. We always are me. But most times this awareness or person includes the talking in our heads. So if we are always a person what goes away? I think the ideas about who and what we are. The conditioned mind as well. There is only now and now we don't have to be a thing. We can just be. And the interpretations in our mind, we can take our attention off of them. Reside in the now with no thoughts from the past or future. No goals, nothing to become or seek. No judgement whatsoever. Nothing to change. Nothing to think about. "Do nothing" I think includes "no doer."

I think if we are not projecting a person based on the thought stream in our minds, instead just being what we are free of this, then we can be in full activity, full interaction with whatever is around us and still be in "do nothing" meditation as "activity" is not the doing we have stopped, it's the projection of "person." Awareness is always in "activity" it's just does that "activity" include the talking in our minds? To "not do" I think one just is. The "activity" is to have an awareness and experience of the now without interest in the internal talking or thought and memory created person.

There's nothing one can do, there is what we are doing. Is one aware of what one is doing in the sense of having the attention on the talking in our heads? But even here one can always be aware of the "talking in our heads" but as what! As the one identifying with this talking as self or as the one not identifying with this content as self? The one "looking" at thought can be a thought creation. The person looks in other words.

I think it's so easy to think, "I will be free of thought," and to set about making that happen...missing the reality the "seeker" of that is the person constructed by and based on thought. It's noticing something we are doing, not something we do that frees us. I think really to "do nothing" is just to notice the doing we are doing and that awareness in itself stops the identification as we are then not the person, the awareness tied up with thought, we are then the awareness looking at thought, not attached to it or identified with it anymore.

[FallingLeaves]

fwiw the accepted way (for example in taoism) is to see what life is like ideally, without blinders, then progressively get more and more in line with this ideal until one day you just naturally get tired of thinking about the ideal and drop it. And get to live the ideal.

Bottom line being that at some point you've got to just let go??? Which seems to be a broad point that is made about all this.

The notion of following the ideal being another way postulated that you can automate doing that.

I don't know if that can actually work. Because it does bring in more automation to the now which is something I'm finding seems to be disliked.... paying attention here, now and not being locked into my conceptions about how to relate to that seems preferred.

The other problem being of course I'm deferring my life to some point in the future when things are better, and saying that for my now I've got to act in a way that will get me there.... and I'm finding it harder and harder to accept giving up my now over such things...

and partly that is because I discerned that if I act a certain way for a long time just to get specific results, I won't be able to give up that activity just because I've gotten the results.... my life will be bound to what I spent my previous time doing, not to the results I got by doing it. And I don't LIKE the things I have to do to get the results I've supposed I have to have. And I do spend more time trying to get places than I ever do in those places that I got to I notice..... So I'll be forever bound to what for as long as I stay on that road?

WEll that is the way it seems to work for me anyway.

[Still_Waters]

Originally Posted by J_A_S_G

Jon Kabat-Zinn is widely regarded as the “grandfather of American mindfulness.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn was a disciple of the Korean Zen Master, Seung Sahn, and wrote the intro to Seung Sahn's book, "Wanting Enlightenment Is a BIG MISTAKE".

Seung Sahn is an outrageous "freedom monk" and his teachings are really funny in a very insightful constructive manner. I love this particular book.

[Still_Waters]

EXCERPT POST 5:

Originally Posted by Gem

I have never understood teaching a beginner support that they drop later on, and dropping contradicts everything they were instructed to do previously. From my analytic and rational view point, it makes not sense.

One of the meditations recommended by Ramana Maharshi was on "I AM" (with no other thoughts whatsoever).

Eventually, as Ramana pointed out, that which is no longer even says "I AM".

I can fully understand how a technique can be recommended which, at some point, is no longer even practiced.

[J_A_S_G]

Originally Posted by Still_Waters

Seung Sahn is an outrageous "freedom monk" and his teachings are really funny in a very insightful constructive manner. I love this particular book.

Here's a humorous Buddhist monk.

https://youtu.be/ukTaodQfYRQ?list=PL...qIg8q6QRm5Y J

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Still_Waters

I can fully understand how a technique can be recommended which, at some point, is no longer even practiced.

In mindfulness there is body and mind aspect, and there is the aspect of self-inquiry. All these aspects are consistent in that you look to see what is there rather than act to make something happen. The common contradiction in the teaching is to start making something happen, and then stop doing that (do nothing).

In some cases, using imagination in some way is applied to particular purposes, like controlling breaths for prasnayams techniques, so please don't interpret me as being against it.

Such a thing as breath awareness doesn't contradict self inquiry as both aspects are mere awareness. I think the self inquiry as per Ramana overlooks body (senses), which is instrumental to mind, whereas mindfulness holistically encompasses mind/body/spirit, but I'm in full support of self inquiry as per Ramana, and my critique would be all positive.

[Still_Waters]

EXCERPT POST16:

Originally Posted by Gem

Such a thing as breath awareness doesn't contradict self inquiry as both aspects are mere awareness. I think the self inquiry as per Ramana overlooks body (senses), which is instrumental to mind, whereas mindfulness holistically encompasses mind/body/spirit, but I'm in full support of self inquiry as per Ramana, and my critique would be all positive.

It's good to hear that you are "in full support of self inquiry as per Ramana" and that your "critique would be all positive".

It is my understanding that Ramana does NOT overlook the body (senses) and, for certain people in certain situations, he has recommended that they focus only on pranayama and/or body scan "meditations".

[Gem]

Originally Posted by Still_Waters

Ramana does NOT overlook the body (senses) and, for certain people in certain situations, he has recommended that they focus only on pranayama and/or body scan "meditations".

That's good! I think the idea is 'just observe', and everything happens all by itself. It's true in sensory perception with your aware presence and the uprising happiness of your nature. Ever felt like laughing, and it's just the same as crying? My personal opinion is breath awareness which extends to body awareness is a sensible way of purification, as it loosens all solidity so it can start to open up and flow. One day you touch the origin and understand, of course. It's still the same. I mean it is this way. This is how it is.

[Still_Waters]

EXCERPT POST 18:

Originally Posted by Gem

I think the idea is 'just observe', and everything happens all by itself.

Well said !