Do Nothing

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I've heard many good things about the "Do Nothing" meditation technique. If anyone has been practicing  it for a long time I'd like to hear your results, thanks in advance. 

[Prabhaker]

25 minutes ago, Mr Lenny said:

If anyone has been practicing  it for a long time I'd like to hear your results, thanks in advance.

If you can sit, there is no need for meditations. In Japan, for meditation they have the word zazen. It means just sitting, doing nothing. If you can sit, not doing anything, this is the ultimate in meditations. There is no need for any other thing.

But can you sit? There is the crux of the whole problem. Can you sit? Can you just sit doing nothing? If that is possible – just sit, do nothing – everything settles by itself, everything simply flows by itself. You are not needed to do anything. But the problem is – can you sit?

If it is possible, this is the ultimate in meditation. If it is not possible, then you will have to use techniques because through techniques only this will become possible. Through techniques, one day you will realize the whole absurdity. All techniques of meditation are just like pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Meditation is absurd but one has to realize it. It is a great realization. When one realizes that his meditation is absurd, then it simply drops.

'Sitting silently, 
doing nothing, 
the spring comes 
and the grass grows by itself.'

There are inner seasons of life. So don't be worried - the spring is bound to come.

[Telepresent]

@Mr Lenny I would recommend Do Nothing in combination with something that allows you to actively challenge your reality.  Do Nothing can be an increibly powerful experience, and can make you feel great, (and please read everything I say here as one traveller to another: I am no expert nor teacher) my experiences with it in an attempt to reach a greater understanding of my experience / consciousness depend upon something else to provide a contextual understanding within which I can appreciate Do Nothing.  For me, that's self-inquiry/spiritual autolysis.

I suspect Do Nothing on its own is a very powerful meditation.  But if you're trying to break down You, I doubt it will do it on its own.  Still, that's one amateur to another

[Capethaz]

@Mr Lenny @Telepresent Do-Nothing is a very good technique and you can do just it to get Enlightened. It's a classic path to Enlightenment. It's known as Dzogchen, in Zen as Shikatanza or "Just-Sitting", Krishnamurti calls it Choiceless Awareness. So yea, it's a powerful form of meditation.

[TheSophie]

I've only tried it a few times, so not quite what you are after, but here is what I found.

(Previous to this I've been concentrating on calming my mind down as I had anxiety / intrusive thought issues I was working through. So trying 'Do Nothing' was a bit of a gamble for me.)

It felt strange and took some getting used to.

It's actually very hard to do - you keep wanting to influence things, stop things, think about specific things. It's hard to watch your thoughts whilst staying completely detached from them.

The first time I did it my thoughts turned a bit, er, naughty, but in an amusing way... I was watching them and thinking 'oh come on now, that's enough of that... again?' but you just have to let things play out.

It was exactly like watching a monkey go wild in a beautiful house - subsequent times have been much much calmer, to the extent that the last time I did it almost NO thoughts even came up, it was incredibly calm with NO effort.

The first time I did it I found myself giggling involuntarily - the whole experience was such a joyous freedom, like being locked in a room for years and then being allowed out, you'd just kind of run around and laugh and hug people.

I had a silly smile on my face for hours afterwards.

I'll definitely be doing more of it. Luckily I've had no bad experiences so far... maybe when I have a bad session I'll change my tune.  Then again, hopefully with enough other work there may not be too many bad ones.