Last weekend I attended a two day teaching retreat led by someone called Jetson Khandro Rinpoche, a female Tibetan Lama. (Translated her name means precious reverend space dancer!). She was teaching about ‘doing nothing’ meditation based upon a text written by a nineteenth-century Lama called Patrul Rinpoche who called himself an ‘old dog’.
We always say that doing nothing is the most difficult thing of all because everything in us strains to do something - anything - rather than just nothing. Well, Khandro Rinpoche did not disappoint in confirming this. Her text basically said that the awakened mind is right here and now, literally it is our ‘ordinary mind’, and then gave page after page of all the ways we obscure it further through our attempts to ‘improve’ our experience of it. Something that is impossible and therefore unnecessary. It was brutal.
I have heard this teaching before but this time what struck me was just how extremely ordinary, ‘ordinary mind’ is. Buddhism fundamentally believes that once we experientially know what is real, uncluttered by all the emotions and thoughts that we obscure it with, then we enter an indescribable space that is free from all suffering - we become ‘awakened’. However, what Khandro Rinpoche conveyed was just how very close this already is. What is real is the indivisibility of emptiness and clarity - translated this simply means that as we sit here right now reading this, everything perceived, including ‘myself’, is within an awareness that is full of appearances that are perpetually changing. Just this, nothing more.
Khandro Rinpoche admitted that when this is entirely grasped it sounds disappointing - is that it, nothing more far out or spiritual? - but no, just this. Of course what is different is that the thing that was right under our nose is now recognised in a new light. If I can just rest in the awareness that already exists without adding anything extra to the experience then I am instantly resting in the awakened state. However there is a catch - of course there is! - doing this continuously is virtually impossible. Buddhas, awakened ones, can do it, ordinary sentient being such as ourselves cannot.
However, we can make a start. This is where the doing nothing meditation comes in. Khandro Rinpoche called this ‘leaving things as they are’. Leave the eyes wide open, gazing without focusing on anything in particular. Leave the body in whatever posture it is in without moving it at all. And leave the flow of appearances that continually arise within the mind just as they are. Resting in the thoughts and emotions, that once not followed, will simply come and go.
So when we go into our third room within our meditation igloo this is what we are up to - nothing whatsoever, leaving things just as they are.
NW. 19 June 2024
By chance I came across this video of Khandro Rinpoche discussing effortlessness in meditation with a student on YouTube a few weeks back - very interesting dialogue between teacher and student, if you'd care to take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7iL2Kb8eSI
Always helpful to read the essence of 'doing nothing meditation' , not trying seems so alien so much of the time , in my busy mind ! and the teachings from a source carefully explained, of what a sitting practice might truly be,wonderful .