Gil Fronsdal, a teacher at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California, gives this short talk (a dharmette) on doing nothing. He says a big part of learning mindfulness meditation is learning to do nothing, which is hard for some people. If you want to do something, he suggests, work on undoing all the doings that you did. Undo.
There’s so many agendas we have, things we try to avoid, things we’re trying to plan or fix. And we bring these tendencies to meditation, and it’s the undoing of those forces that takes us away from ourselves, disconnect ourselves from ourselves.
And so, one of the great undoings in meditation is to let go of the thought. Let go of your thinking. Chances are thinking is not that useful, more often than not. Thinking is a vehicle for a lot of the doings, a lot of the wantings, a lot of the avoidances, a lot of the negative self-regard, a lot of the preoccupations that we have.
And so to undo the thinking. Just do, just be. It’s actually a very striking thing to sit and meditate and not try to accomplish something. Part of the reason is that it’s so different from how many people live their lives. It kind of pulls the rug from underneath. All the kind of living a life to accomplish to do and to be and prove oneself and to have more friends, all the stuff we’re trying to accomplish.
More from: Gil Fronsdal
