4. Do Nothing

The Elements of Meditation Practice 4 - Do Nothing
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Transcript

Okay, so I think we're almost at the point where we're ready to do our most complex practice the one I've been waiting to bring out. And I'm going to leave I know this is gonna be very hard for some of us, actually, it will be hard for some people, this is the do nothing practice. So we're going to do nothing now. And I want to unpack a little bit about what that means and why we would want to do that. So, right now, countless generations of Zen masters are turning over in their graves. As they as they hear my words in the first three practice that we did, even the loving kindness one's probably not so much, because there's a entire set of schools of meditation that are independently there and different traditions that are about actually the last thing we need to do is try to do more is try to be more concentrated, try to be more loving more like this, like meditations would be this place will be just be allowed to be and we don't have a giant a Agenda self improvement agenda that we're always holding over our own heads.

And indeed, for that reason, a lot of people in a concentration practice and insight practice, it's very good to be motivated and to be and to try to move forward. But you get into really neurotic relationships with your own practice where it's all about how you're not doing good enough and you're not progressing far enough. And it's like it ends up just being another neurotic thing in your life that you fucking up. You know, and I know that because I would did that for many years. That was my mo and meditation trying to neurotically perfect my, my meditation practice until I realized that that was screwing it up. So so within even within Zen say Zen has to famously has the Renzi schools and the Soto's schools.

The rinnai schools are like they're like the king of the strivers. They're just like Ramu moon or jamming moon or belly and they're trying to get enlightened in their pouring sweat, and they're just like, you know, they're out there in the freezing cold and that's the resize school. It's just like in the movies, but then you have the Soto school. Which is basically the just sitting school. It's just, that's the again, he his philosophy was called practice enlightenment, you practice the fact that you're already there, you don't need to do anything, just sit there and sit and just know that you're already fine. They are already wherever you need to go.

And that in itself, that is the art of acceptance that the act of sitting and accepting yourself of just being okay with your own being is the deepest training. So any attempt to practice without looking at that, without looking at the style would be dramatically incomplete. And actually, you do see with a lot of practitioners over time, a lot of them end up falling more into this camp style practice where they may have started much more deliberate and building up these qualities. And at certain points, practice equality can kind of it's like there's a user to lose it thing that's there, but at a certain point, also certain things can lock in and you're kind of at a new level of concentration or new level, especially equanimity. And so you get to a place where you're just have this More generally a quantum is allowing accepting stands in your practice.

And it's so healthy to do this, you know, it's so healing to do this. It's the healing the practice of just accepting exactly how you are and what we what people find in practices, a lot of the biggest shifts that happen in a practice the biggest breakthroughs, they're preceded by a moment of that exactly that acceptance of just, you know what I'm having a hard sit, I'm not that concentrated is not going well. Fuck it. I'm just gonna let myself just sit here and be okay with that. And as soon as you do that, this struggle that you were in, suddenly can clear out and you can actually drop into a deeper level of clarity or of equity, which is really interesting. So it's sort of like this thing of, you know, it's a, it's the practice of kind of getting out of our own way.

And some people come to this and it's like drawing a horse to water. They're like, they can't get enough of this practice. It's so healing and it's They can click right into it. For others of us, it's actually very hard practice because we're in this one I'm about to show you, it's literally going to be called do nothing. It's about being able to sit here and be and let your attention do whatever it does, and be okay with that. But a lot of us want to know what to do.

Like, there's a sense of fear or instability that we need to actually know how to control our experience or what to do right now. Or what's doing this moment. Have you ever had that experience where you have a chunk of free time and you're like, you don't know what to do with it, and you're like, you got to figure out right now what movies on or what thing you can do here, anybody have that experience? Because I'm, I'm like, right away, I want to pay for it over get I don't want that's like a little bit of a hole. It's like a void. Ah, you're gonna fall into the void, but you won't.

Because you're already here. You already exist, you're not going to dis exist, because you didn't fill up the void fast enough. You know, it's just so again, the practice of learning to be with your own uncomfortableness. And they can clear out some of those, all that agitating feeling if you can really truly come to a place where you're more comfortable with your being So we'll try it. I mean, that's the I mean, you know, that's the kind of close notes, we'll see what the reality brings us when we try to practice. So any questions before we start?

Okay, think of it as a gift that you're giving yourself, you know, just the gift of just not having to do anything. So you're allowed to be completely slovenly and lazy and that's, that's not only is that that's the goldstar material. So let's try and pardon the bell.

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