Doing non-Doing

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,

 

I prefer to do without doing. Be without being.  Work without working. But I am not always sucessful. Doing without doing does not mean we are not doing something.  Doing, being, working: these are thoughts we add to our doing. It means doing doing. This way is not the Great Way.  The Great Way is the way of doing non-doing.

 

This is the way of non-attachment.  Great Masters in all religions have come to this place.

 

The Chasidic Master Rebbe Nachman says it this way, "When you have purified your mind, there is no difference between this world, the grave, and the next world."  What is this "purification?  It is direct being.  It is the practice of, and intent in, being one with everything.  Theists would say, with the Rebbe, "When you only desire God and His Torah, all are the same...However, if you are attached to this world, there is an agonizing difference. This world is spread before you while the grave is tight and narrow.  But when you purify your mind, all will be the same."

 

In God and the Torah there is only oneness with God. God is in everything; you are in everything; no separation. The narrow, tight grave is Small Mind thinking. Concepts separating us from Oneness.  Just as concepts of doing, being, and working, separate us from just being the thing itself.

 

Just so, Master Dogen teaches that there is no difference between practice of Zazen and Enlightenment.  The actuality of sitting upright is practice realization.

 

These are very different ways of being in the world, ways pretty foreign to us in this time of compartmentalization, multi-tasking, and the idolizing of self.

  

While it sounds complex it is really pretty simple. 

 

1. The Universe is One.

2. We separate ourselves from the Universe through mental activity that creates the illusion of separation.

3. Drop the illusion of self and what is left is vast emptiness: the Universe, as it is.

4. Live free within it and all things support and nurture it.

...or as the theists say, glorify God.

 

How do we purify our mind?

 

We practice Zazen or Hitbodedut.  Zazen is the practice of seated meditation.  We withdraw to a room and sit facing a wall, placing our attention on simply being present.  Hitbodedut is Jewish Meditation.  It is much the same. It essentially means to withdraw from others and come into stillness.  We open ourselves in this stillness to the presence of God, or in Zen terms, the Absolute.

 

It takes practice and commitment to the practice.

 

But then again we already possess Buddha-nature, it is what we are made of.

 

This nature is the Eternal.

 

Be well.