A good article that Thusness recommended me a year ago, just got reminded of it in another forum.
How to do nothing - Basic Instructions
If your focus space is Nothingness, then “Evenly Cover the space and do
nothing” reduces to
“Do Nothing.” Here’s how to Do Nothing:
- You don’t need to position your attention in any particular way.
- Let whatever happens happen, but as soon as you notice that you are
doing anything
intentionally, stop.
The second part of the instruction requires some clarification. We will
define “intentional” to
mean something you can voluntarily control, meaning you have total
control over initiating and
stopping the action –like raising or dropping your arm. Therefore, by
definition, you can always
stop an intentional act, because if you cannot stop doing something, it
is not really intentional
and you don’tneed to stop. The instructions are very clear; only stop
doing what you easily can
stop doing. Let anything else happen as it will.
Examples of things that you can stop doing are:
- Intentionally thinking (as opposed to thinking that just happens to
you)
- Trying to focus on a certain thing
- Trying to have equanimity
- Trying to keep track of what is going on
- Trying to meditate
More About Thinking
Some thoughts are intentional. It’s possible for you to make a decision
to think about
something and it’s also possible to decide not to think about that
thing. Other thoughts are
not intentional. They just sort of happen to you. They are not under
conscious control. You
may find that your thoughts are mostly intentional or mostly not under
your control.
The important point to remember is that the “Doing Nothing” as we’ll
define it does not
require you to stop all thoughts. You just stop intentionally thinking.
If you can’t stop
thinking about something then you don’t need to stop because you’re not
thinking
intentionally, by our definition of that word. So by this definition,
“Doing Nothing” is
actually a very easy-going process. It just means stop doing whatever
you can stop doing and
don’t worry about the rest of the stuff.
Doing
Nothing and the Experience of Nothing
Doing Nothing is a way of moving toward the experience of nothingness.
When you Do
Nothing, you let go of the intention to go any place or achieve any
goal. You even let go of
the intention to get focused or have clarity or avoid chaos. In essence
you let go of the
intention to “meditate.”
At first this may be a bit disconcerting and uncomfortable, but after a
while you begin to get
the sense that something is pulling you, taking you on a journey. If you
Do Nothing long and
continuously enough, nothing will begin to tug on you, taking you on a
journey to Zero,
Groundless Ground, the Source of consciousness. In other words, you
don’t have to try to get
to the Source—you just stop doing anything and wait for it to get to
you!
To sum it up, when you practice “Doing Nothing” it doesn’t mean that the
goal is to have
nothing happen. In fact there may be a lot happening. That’s okay, as
long as you keep letting
go of the intention to do anything about what’s happening.
http://www.shinzen.org/Retreat%20Reading/Return%20to%20the%20Source.pdf