Before I engrossed and fascinated myself in the mystical East, I would often hear of spiritual people such as gurus and monks. It seemed such a waste of time for them to sit so still all day and do nothing. So pointless. It seemed so unfair on the rest of the world busy making clothes, cars, and food to sustain us. I could not entertain the idea that these spiritual people were doing anything in the slightest bit constructive. What interest could any of the world have in people doing less? It was such an alien concept.
Only later in life I would discover that I did indeed have quite an affinity for doing nothing, staring at the skies and gazing towards the oceans. What added even more to the task was that many people found this quite a distressing occupation, which I did find all too amusing. But at the back of it, these same people had a secret wish to be still, to retire and swan around the world doing nothing but travelling. Many reserved this for the end of their life, a card of achievement, a reason to work so hard, be so sensible, and earn so much money. The only problem for most of them was that this was simply impossible, a task too far. This was not for the lack of money which we all would think, but that doing nothing as they had dreamed and strived for was a task in itself, a vast achievement that most of them were simply incapable of achieving, or certainly not in the next million years.
As I became more and more practiced in the art of doing nothing, men of achievement began to take notice. Some would be violently annoyed by my utter disregard for achievement in life. Then to my surprise, I met more and more people who despite being high achievers themselves were secretly trying, quite hard to match my efforts of not doing and my apparent hap hazard approach to life. Little snippets of comments would inadvertently slip into the conversation, briefly hinting at their dream. This did come as a bit of a surprise when people I respected as achievers, and doers were secretly trying to emulate this lack of doing. Maybe it was cool? Had it been mentioned in Vogue and now becoming a status symbol? I had no idea but it did puzzle me why anyone would want to do nothing.
As I practiced the doing nothing concept, I began to find out what a hard job I had indeed chosen. Even one of the simple exercises I gave myself was proving quite a challenge. Quite to my surprise I was wondering if I had bitten off more than I could chew.
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When I began to study it in depth there seemed a lot more to the task than I had first assumed. I had amassed a mountain of learning on the subject. I think that if I had had the support of my fellow comrades this would have made the task a little easier. Somewhat annoyingly, despite my companion’s quiet inner wanting to learn this feat, outwardly they would cast scorn, and rebuke me for my apparent laziness. They would splutter and fume as I lay on the bench in front of our house practicing my afternoon “nap task”, despite having had a full and plentiful night of wonderful restful sleep.
Snoozing away in the nap task was probably my most favourite part of the day. As with all new ventures there were constant setbacks. This task did require some pleasant amounts of heat which were only provided in England during the brief summer, and for only a short spell of time. The frequent clouds crossing the sky would prove a constant source of difficulty as they obscured the sun. This had the worrying effect of lowering the body temperature resulting in the need to move location or retrieve a blanket, destroying the whole philosophy of the practice.
Wind rain and the cold winters were proving a challenge to the system despite having a good quality south facing bench against the South wall of the house. To make matters worse, as the summer warmed up to the optimum temperature this provoked a hive of disturbing external activity around the village.
The geographic positioning of the bench was indeed a major problem which would lead to catastrophic results. The south side of our house faced the village road, and my arm, when outstretched could reach the boundary fence with the road. As the weather continued to warm you would have expected progress to be swift as the warm weather should have provided a lulling effect on the afternoon nap.
Disaster struck. Passing villagers began to notice my efforts at the task in hand and it was as if subconsciously they tried to divert me from success. Thinking I was laying on the bench because I had nothing better to do, they would all stop and ask how the weather was? what I was doing today? when was I going to get a job? Telling them, “absolutely nothing”, just didn’t seem to wash. Had I not said it loud enough? Or did the concept just not ring home to them?
I would repeat it again, but still they would persist with their infernal chatter of this and that. Had I not been deeply involved in my task of immense achievement, then I would have been only too pleased to have interrupted
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the boredom of the day with trivial conversation and tit bits of local gossip, such as who had died, who was ill, and the weather, which I was only too aware of. Eventually my lack of response would begin to come to their notice and most would move onto more fertile ground, leaving me to re focus on my task.
As time passed so more obstacles to progress appeared. Had I mistakenly taken on too much? I had worked hard all summer on my bench, and did not seem to be any closer to the nothing I had been aiming for.
As I studied the literature available, I was beginning to get a little worried. There seemed far more to this task than I had originally assumed. It became apparent that the job description was much longer than my employer had let on. The first task I had tried to achieve was to do nothing all day. This was a hard task in the village where I lived, and I had resigned myself to trekking to a remote part of India where the ambient temperature was more conducive, and the natives would not wish to trouble a white man with trivial conversation in a foreign language.
This was all very well, but as I began to probe below the surface, I found that what I had been trying to achieve was only the tip of the iceberg, and the trip to India would still prove an arduous adventure. To reach the top of the promotion tree you had to achieve the true and full complete doing nothing, which had an infinitely long list of tasks. To cut this short doing nothing did not just involve laying around on the bench and lazing in bed. This had just been the introduction, the freshers week, the temptation, the carrot on the stick. It had as little to do with doing nothing as doing everything. I was floored, I had been coaxed into a job by a faulty description and gross misrepresentation by my cheating boss. I wondered about legal redress, but the only problem was, it was my own mind that had played the trick, and misled me all the time.
The task was quite specific. Doing nothing really meant what it said. Sleep was something, it had a name and a concept and so even this was not part of the job. It all began to revolve around the mind. The mind was the driving force behind this obsessive doing which seemed to infiltrate all of life. Even people lazing around were doing something, so were not as lazy as they thought. They were not achieving the nothing they thought they were. How did I achieve this nothing?
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The mind kept whirring round and round, throwing out ideas concepts, lists, jobs, needs and wants on a constant basis, faster and slower. It seemed like all of life was subject to this relentless force. No one ever seemed to question this machine. They just followed its constant demands. It was as if they were its slave. Each person had a justification for relentlessly following the mind’s demands, the children, the mortgage, missing out on opportunities, the list went on. If one reason wasn’t given, another would do. People with seeming plenty of money, food or possessions would still hungrily want more. In fact in my life I had found the more money I had, the more I wanted ‘more’. We were all subject to this force, some more than others. It wasn’t as if it was greed, it was more an inability to combat the problem, a lack of realization about the situation, a lack of perspective. Above all it seemed like the mind drove people to be busy, so they had little time left to do nothing.
This seemed like a conspiracy. It was as if the mind was hiding the nothing from view, obscuring it with excessive tasks, well above what was required for pure survival and the pleasant enjoyment of life. At least this went some way to satisfying my guilt. Because there were so many people doing so much in life and to such an excessive amount, I need not feel so guilty about lazing around, doing nothing and leaching off the rest of society, skimming off some of the froth of produce for myself as I lay comfortably on my bench. There was a surplus of doing which frankly needed to be balanced out.
It took some time to come round to the idea that the real doing nothing that I was trying to achieve had to begin with the mind. It was this that was the foe. I had to begin to identify the two sides of myself. On one side I had a part that sought peace solitude, bliss and love. The other was out to wreck my bliss and provided a smoke screen to this, throwing endless projects, tasks, demands, emotions and problems in the way. As time passed I slowly learnt to separate the two, but it was a vague boundary. It did not seem to have a definite definition like I thought it should. This made the task even harder, as I could not identify the problem with any certainty, and without this identification it would be hard going to silence the mind. The deeper I looked into my course of study, the bigger the task seemed to get. Doing everything again suddenly seemed like a much better idea, it was simpler, much easier, but once the challenge had been laid in front of me I was unable to let go.