Just Hanging Out

Along time ago I asked someone I knew what sort of meditation they were doing. They, like me, were interested in Tibetan Buddhism so the question was kind of interesting. However, their answer was at the time a bit shocking, I was non-plussed, they said they didn’t meditate. How could that be? Wasn’t meditation an essential aspect of the path?

What I didn’t understand at the time is that the type of Buddhism we were both engaged with made a distinction between meditation methods that required using a specific technique or method - so say, mindfulness of the breath or the senses - and those that didn’t - what we would call a ‘doing nothing’ meditation. It was the latter that my friend was referring to. Technically he was right, he didn’t meditate - actively engage in a specific method - he just ‘did nothing’. There is even a saying in Tibetan about exactly this. Translated it says, ‘ordinary people meditate to become enlightened while yogis do not’. The meaning being, that as we get better at meditating we move from a doing something style of meditation to a doing nothing one. But why?

Really it’s quite simple. If the consequences of every action - say ordinary mindfulness meditation - have a beginning, middle and end, then any state of calm intentionally created, even when it is really profound and sustained, will eventually change and decay. How can it not? That is the reality of everything. Therefore, if we are to attain something that lasts, really lasts for ever, it cannot be something that relies on an action - meditating - to create it. Rather, it must be the recognition of something that already exists - something that’s always existed and we simply haven’t noticed it. And for this to occur we must stop, deeply relax, and learn to do nothing but rest in awareness. Rest in our buddha-nature. But that’s not easy - we are all addicted to doing something - anything - all of the time.

Another story: The famous Tibetan yogi Milarepa, when he first wanted to learn meditation went to a lama who gave him the profound instruction to just do nothing and relax. Milarepa said thank you and then just hung out for the month - great, he thought, just like being on holiday. When he returned and the lama asked what his experience had been he realised immediately that Milarepa had misunderstood him. He didn’t mean hang out entirely distracted, absorbed in whatever thoughts were going through his mind, this was just what happened normally. So he packed him off to another teacher who taught him a ‘dong something’ meditation. How through applied mindfulness, concentration may be developed and the deeply calm state this creates - it’s called ‘samadhi’ - then makes it possible to truly relax and do nothing without instantly being carried off into distractions. Without floating about in a diffuse state where there is nether clarity nor calm.

This is where our ‘tool box’ comes in and the knowledge of which tool we need to use as we actively observe our meditation. Busy, restless mind - get out the tool of simple mindfulness of the breath or other body sensations and create a calm state. This is our main tool, it creates a foundation that is utterly essential for anything else. If we can’t concentrate we are distracted - simple. Emotional disturbance - make the felt sense of the disturbance, the feeling of the emotions in our body, the object of mindfulness. This is a kind of sub-set of intentional mindfulness. It’s still ordinary mindfulness but here the object is specifically our emotions. And then if we feel that our mind is settled, calm, concentrated, then we can just let all the doing and trying go and rest in the awareness that is already present. A quality of awareness that is naturally spacious and clear - and weirdly - doesn’t seem to have a ‘me’ at its centre. This is what my friend was referring to and Milarepa’s teacher was trying to communicate.

As for the whole idea of having a tool box. I know there are lots of ways of meditating that use just one method and when sitting we are either present or away with the fairies. However, having a tool kit delivers more responsibility into our hands, it makes us our own teacher for the whatever length of time we are sitting. It requires that we know or monitor what our experience is and act upon what we see and feel. It acts as a counter to just flopping ourselves down and allowing ourselves to drift off. Mistaking ‘doing nothing’ with literally doing nothing whatsoever in the way Milarepa did. It discriminates between the precision of various ‘doing something’ types of meditating and the carefree openness to what already is that is the signature of authentically doing absolutely nothing at all. (Which just to be clear and lift the pressure, most of us can only ‘do’ for probably just a few seconds at first).

It's weird, a kind of not easy, easy.

NW. 7 March 2025