Doing Nothing
Much of our practice revolves around doing nothing. This is especially the case when our reflexive behavior is to do something. This is why we put so much focus in our practice on extremely fine discrimination of what exactly nothing is for us in each moment. Nothing has an innate, dynamic and immediate structure. Our practice revolves around discovering what that structure is, defining it, embodying it, letting it be and letting it go.
It’s mind-blowing how much work and practice it takes to do nothing. Nothing is what our everything arises from. This is the essence of our practice: we want our everything to come straight into, through and out the other side of form from nothing and back to nothing without the distortions of our prior everythings.
At this level it’s very difficult to distinguish between what is full enlightenment and an advanced state of dementia. The difference, I imagine, is that one is a voluntary state and the other isn’t.
To Sit and Forget
There is a Taoist practice called Zuo Wang (坐 忘). It means to sit and forget. In this practice, we intentionally forget whatever comes to mind. Sitting and forgetting is an incredibly refreshing practice that is useful in many ways. It can be a useful tool in our Min Jie practice when we find we’re being pulled away from delving into the structure of the moment by urgently pressing matters.
Matters often present as urgent, but rarely are.
What happens to our capacity for memory when we voluntarily practice how to forget? And what happens to the rest of us in this process?
Completely Useless
I’ve wondered many times if our notions of enlightenment originally came from a protocol of respect that we gave to our elders once upon a time. I find it interesting that a strong earmark of highly developed people is often that they are nearly to completely useless on the Earth plane and in many matters practical.
It is said of the originator of our standing practice, Wang Xiang Zhai, that he frequently did not have the strength or will even to lift his chopsticks to eat. Yet Master Wang’s students had to pay close attention when going for a walk with him because if their attention deviated from the conversation of the moment for a fraction of a second, he would leap over the nearest building and walk the other way down the next street, leaving his students lost, confused and contrite.
Getting Even
Our current neurological science confirms again and again that when one portion of our brain develops strongly, it happens at the expense of another specific part of the brain. The result is often quirky personality development. The more masterful a person gets in her/his specific field, the more exaggerated that quirk tends to become.
This is a strong argument for our Min Jie practices, which aim to develop everything at the same time, evenly.