What’s the most advanced spiritual practice? Several traditions have arrived at the same answer: Nothing. This should be surprising: that you find this in the Buddhist world, the Christian world, the Hindu world. We should be confused given that the world’s meditative traditions contain bliss states that feel like MDMA, deity visualizations that make you literally feel like a god, deity visualizations that involve having imaginary sex with celestial beings, and a panoply of other tricks.
How could doing nothing be valued over those?
The trick of it is that “do nothing,” the instruction, tells you little about the hallucinatory, profound things that happen if you let yourself come to a stop.
When someone with a regimented practice that’s gone stale comes to me for advice, one suggestion I almost always give is, “see if you can just do nothing for an hour.” If I feel like elaborating, I might say, “let your attention settle into a natural groove of open receptivity. Be like a cat, with a delicate, broad awareness taking in the whole environment, inner and outer. Let all intention go beyond this extremely light intention.”
Frequently, I then receive a text message explaining that they’ve had an immensely powerful experience, and they sometimes attribute wizard powers to me. But I am no wizard. I am simply aware of the power of Nothing, having made Nothing practice the main anchor of my contemplative life for half a decade now. I like other things, but I always come back to Nothing.
I’m wary of trying to describe the powerful experiences of Nothing Practice, because I’m liable to induce a classic meditation fuckup: practicing results rather than method. Which is to say: you can easily go wrong in meditation by trying to make your mind do the after picture. For example, awareness of breathing practice tends to produce peace and rapture, but not if you monitor your mind and try to force it into a state of pretend peace and fake rapture.
So don’t try to duplicate what I am writing below. Take it as a disclosure of the possibilities. Your practice may not resemble what I subsequently describe.
Nevertheless. Here is something like what your mind might naturally do, if you simply practice Nothing without expectation—the results that might accrue over an hour if you attend to the delicate labor of non-intention:
Find a posture that balances alertness and comfort.
For 5-15m, settle into a natural, nice-feeling groove of present-moment attention, neither pushing away nor grabbing onto thoughts and emotions.
Notice a natural clarity beginning to arise, which feels strangely blissful.
Notice, on the edges, a troubling feeling lurking—something like the fear of death, or shame about previous misdeeds.
Let it approach you, allow a disowned feeling that’s quietly dominated your entire life.
Feel that you will certainly die, for several minutes.
Discover that even within the heart of the dreaded feeling, you can find clarity and peace, in a part of you that has never changed.
Realize, for a moment, that you don’t ever need to be afraid, because nothing can touch your fundamental consciousness.
For a few seconds, spontaneously drop into a timeless stillness outside identity, Nothing itself, and find it shockingly fresh and beautiful.
Go “what the fuck is that,” try to grab onto it, lose it.
Know that you will begin your next practice by attempting to recreate this moment of timeless stillness, laugh at your own silliness.
End the sit refreshed, amazed, confused.
With more practice, your Nothing sits might start to look like this:
Settle into your customary posture, which feels like rejoining a friend.
Slip into a state of deep, pleasant tranquility, after 5-10m of allowing your sub-minds to quiet.
Contact the fact that many layers of conscious experience taken to be essential—the sense of self, time, space—are actually produced by habitual mental action.
Watch these habitual mental actions slow, and, sometimes, halt.
Rest in a space beyond concept that feels impersonal and yet universal; the home at the heart of Being.
Rejoice that the Nothing you once compulsively fled is an endlessly refreshing font of creation that can be found in every sensation.
Leave the sit but take the Nothing with you, find it everywhere, “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” Feel it in your lover’s mouth when you kiss. See it in the thunderclouds in the sky. Realize that you were never separate from God, that this idea is completely laughable. You’re separate from God like a painting is separate from the canvas.
And with, say, years of practice, the walls between this technique and life might start to fall down, such that your “practice” looks like this:
Rest in presence, which is at every moment the origin of being, in any situation, in movement and rest, in disturbance and tranquility.
Be grateful that you can have a mystical experience in line at Trader Joe’s.
But there are some issues that might stop you from getting there. I can’t name them all, but here are a few:
Common failure modes in embracing Nothing:
Having a fulfilling Nothing practice requires an equal embrace of all present sensation. It is welcoming association, not dissociation. But without realizing it, many Nothing practitioners are subtly distancing from disfavored sensations—difficult emotions, sexual urges, etc. If the practice feels dry and dead, rather than pulsating and alive, this is probably what’s happening. Try to intentionally lean into the difficulty and the emotion. I will not report you to the Zen police if you do Nothing but subtly raise the salience of the heart space. Alternatively, engage in a practice involving intentional cultivation of emotion, spontaneity, etc.
If you have too much coarse emotional/intellectual disturbance to find a natural “groove” of resting in sensation, if your mind is still bucking crazily 15-20m in, it might not be the time for Nothing practice. Try more focused absorption practice, like heart practice, or mantra practice—there’s plenty of good concentration techniques. If those are experienced as primarily negative, it might be time for therapy or IFS or confronting that thing you’ve been avoiding. Or just asking: “why might I have a fucked up relationship with rest and enjoyment?”
If you catch yourself fighting your mind, trying to squeeze out all distraction and randomness in mental activity, remember the priceless Shinzen Young pointer: “If you can’t drop it, it’s not an intention.” His video on Nothing practice is excellent.
If you still catch yourself fighting your mind, try on the frame that you are letting God meditate you. Surrender can be a helpful pointer here.
If there’s something on your mind that you don’t have the resources to confront alone—a big feeling or trauma—then don’t try this at home. Nothing practice is psychologically thorough: all of your stuff will come up, in an order not determined by you.
If you can’t adopt a spacious, open awareness on command, try some Loch Kelly cues, or this great Alexander Technique course. If none of that works, your ego might be trying to keep a lid on something—and that might be adaptive in your current situation.
If you want to read more, I like the “natural meditation” section of Angelo Dilullo’s book, and A Trackless Path remains a classic.
If Nothing practice feels spacey and disembodied, try getting in touch with consciousness within the body before orienting towards stillness and non-intention; Realization Process has great exercises along these lines.
If there’s a lot of energy in your body, try non-directed body movement, the “do nothing” practice where you let your animal body steer. I am forever in Corey Hess’ debt for introducing me to this practice, which was pivotal in helping me confront emotional difficulty.
And finally:
Nothing practice can feel bracing, confusing, intense. But it ought to feel good—like an engaging encounter with the mystery of being, not like a chore. If it’s not feeling good for you for whatever reason, come back to it after taking up a more active practice. Nothing will always be there.
When it’s going well, you may ask “am I doing it right?” The core of Nothing practice is to make contact with what cannot be made explicit, a knowing outside of concept. Your explorations will contain delicate variation that can’t possibly be articulated. If you find yourself having a hard time explaining why your Nothing practice is so fulfilling, you are probably on the right track.
“Our capacity to be fully engaged depends on our ability to periodically disengage.” - The Power of Full Engagement
Yes!! Nothing IS Everything. This is one of your finest posts (caveat: I seem to type those words fairly frequently).