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Just Don't Do It

I want to begin this morning with a fable. As a good fable is, it's a great story to interpret in all kinds of interesting ways.

There were these two people who were sentenced to the dungeon. They were sent down to the dungeon and put in the room, and before the door was closed, the guard and executioner said, "You have 24 hours to figure out how to get out of this dungeon. If you figure it out, you can go free, but if you don't figure it out, it's death for both of you." With that, he handed a little rusty nail to one of them and slammed the door shut.

They thought, "Wow, 24 hours to figure out how to get out of here." So they looked at the door, and there was an amazing array of locks on it. Some of them were combination locks, some of them were big padlocks—maybe that was what the nail was for, to pick the padlock. Some of them were elaborate puzzle-like bars that closed the door. The stakes were high: death.

One of them immediately got to work. The other one just sat down against the wall quietly, looking at the door. The one who was working on the door sweated and worked hard, and at some point turned over and said to the one sitting around, "Why aren't you doing something? Are you not going to do anything? Is this going to be the death of us?"

And the person on the wall said, "Maybe, but maybe your trying to do something will be the death of us." It's a strong statement.

The person at the door got completely absorbed in trying to figure out the locks. As the 24 hours started to come to an end, they got more and more frantic, speeding between the locks, trying to figure out the way out, sweat pouring down. The person sitting against the wall just sat there peacefully and quietly. Then, about five minutes before the 24 hours was over, the person against the wall got up, walked to the door, and pushed it. It had never been locked.

The one who was searching and trying to fix it was thrown off by all the locks. They never bothered to see if the door was actually locked.

What dungeons are you living in, and what locks are you trying to undo to get out that maybe don't need to be solved? Maybe what's needed is to sit down and do nothing for a while. Just sit there.

The Principle of "Just Don't Do It"

For the person sitting against the wall, their wonderful spiritual principle was: just don't do it. Why is that a significant principle? Many people in the United States have heard the principle just do it. I think of it a little bit like carpe diem, the Latin phrase for "seize the day." You're supposed to go out, claim and assert yourself, and not have anything stand in your way. So this idea of just don't do it is phenomenal. It turns out that in our practice of meditation and caring for our minds and our hearts, just don't do it is actually a very significant teaching and a very significant practice to do.

What are some of the dungeons we can live in? Some of them have to do with how we see ourselves, how we define ourselves, and how we try to get out of that dungeon. In an abstract way, someone might think that they're a bad person, and that's the dungeon they have to get out of. So then they try to be a good person, and being a good person is kind of a lot of work.

There was a time in my life when I wanted everyone to like me. I had a job where it was almost impossible for everyone to like me because I was the one who had to tell people, "You can't do it that way." I got to see this strong desire to be liked, and I tried an amazing amount of social gymnastics to make it work. It got really stressful. It was a monastic job; I was a kitchen manager. Kitchens are pressure cooker places. Have any of you ever worked in a commercial kitchen?

The legend of that monastery kitchen was that in the 1960s, Ed Brown, who wrote the famous Tassajara Bread Book^[1], was working in the kitchen. At some point, he threw a knife at someone. [Laughter] You can only laugh because it didn't hit anyone! It's a pressure cooker place. So there I was, trying to make everyone like me.

Sometimes we have the idea that we're a wrong person, and then we have to be the right person. We try hard to do the opposite, and it's just a lot of work. Sometimes it doesn't work. Someone who is very insecure might overcompensate in such a way that people pull away. If you're really needy and trying to get everyone to like you, fewer people will actually like you because you're trying so hard, and it just makes people uncomfortable.

When we were raising our first son, when he could start understanding words, sometimes he would be doing something really fun and nice and I would say, "Oh, good boy." My wife explained to me at one point, "You shouldn't say it that way, because that's reinforcing an identity that he's supposed to be a good boy. Then he has to do things to live up to his father's idea of a good boy, and that's just a recipe for challenges as he grows up." So what I would say instead was, "Wow, you're having so much fun doing that." That probably is a problem too, because you can't really be a parent without causing problems! [Laughter] But hopefully, it was much less of a problem to just enthusiastically say, "Oh, that's fun."

When we sit and meditate, we see that our minds do funny things. A few of us have funny minds. We see it doing funny things and think, "I'm kind of mean in there, angry or harsh. I need to be kind." Then we start cranking up the "kind gears." We think, "I've got to get the kind gears going," and we try pumping them out until we're exhausted from doing that work. Then we're even more irritated and harsh about everything.

It's true that we might be harsh or mean in our minds. But to swing the pendulum to the other side and think, "Because of that, I'm supposed to be a kind person. If I'm a bad person, I'm supposed to be a good person. If I'm a wrong person, I'm supposed to be the right kind of person," is sometimes just staying in the same game, being caught in the same complex.

Trusting the Peaceful Place

Instead, what we can do in this practice—again, in the domain of our mind and our hearts—is simply stop doing the unhealthy thing. But don't try to do the healthy thing. It's enough just to stop. You don't have to compensate or swing to the other side as if that's how you're going to be a good person.

Why this works in the mind and heart with meditation is that when you don't do something, there's some settling that happens. We're no longer asserting effort to accomplish something. We're no longer preoccupied, and something begins to open, settle, and relax. Then we have access to some other way of being, some other source. If you feel like you're just a really mean person all the time, you're not supposed to be kind; just stop being mean. That's radical. Maybe that's enough.

People might think, "Oh, it's so nice to be with you. You're not trying to do anything, I can just relax and be myself." I know people who try so hard to be kind. I remember the first time I tried to be kind to someone when I was 18. I think she must have gotten sick of me. I was standing there in college talking to her, being so saccharine and sweet and over the top. Later I walked away thinking, "That was weird." It had never occurred to me how to simply be kind or friendly or nice. I don't think I ever talked to her again, or she never talked to me again!

Just doing nothing makes space. There's a very famous quote from Henri Nouwen^[2], a Christian theologian, who talks about creating a "friendly empty space" for the stranger. Someone you don't know is a stranger, but to receive them in a friendly empty space—as opposed to a crowded space of trying to do things and be something—allows people to be who they are, and lets something evolve and develop.

This idea that there's something deeper in us, a deeper place of wisdom and motivation, is integral to this Dharma practice. It is deeper than the surface preoccupations, surface reactivity, and the surface pendulum that swings from one end to the other. If we are mean, we think we're supposed to be kind. But it's a lot of work to be kind, so we get exhausted. In that exhaustion, we fall back into being mean, and then we try again. It just becomes a lot of work, and we get stuck in the polarity and duality of it all.

If we can just stop, then something deeper can happen. An example I'd like to offer you—maybe some of you have had this experience, I certainly have—is being engaged in trying to figure out a problem. You think about it a lot, trying to figure it out, and probably that part was needed. But then you step away. You go on a bike trip, take a hike, take a shower, or do something completely different where the mind is no longer thinking about it. Suddenly, the solution, the answer, wells up inside. Where did that come from? It came from no longer being engaged in it.

As we stop—and maybe the earlier thinking had to create the momentum inside—we find there's a deeper place processing our life that isn't the conscious part of the mind where reactivity occurs. In Dharma practice, we're trusting this deeper place of what wells up and comes forth. Another way of saying it is that we're trusting a peaceful place. The more we don't do, the more peaceful it is. Now, this can be challenging, of course.

One of the other things that Buddhist psychology teaches, which I think is fascinating for this whole enterprise, is that certain emotional states and states of mind are very easy to assume are fixed. We assume, "This is how it is. This is how the universe is." But in Buddhism, we see them all as processes of the mind, activities of the mind.

To give you one example: boredom. People will say, "This is such a boring situation," "This party is boring," or, "This person is boring." It's a horrible thing to say, right? It's blaming the situation for being boring. There is no situation whatsoever in this universe that is boring. Boring is an evaluation of the human mind. Your mind, or people's minds. As soon as you realize it's an evaluation, a reaction, an activity, or a process of the mind, it becomes possible to calm it down. It's possible to settle it.

These activities of the mind are not inherent. They're not required. We don't have to be involved in this reactivity. I have one teacher who says that boredom is a sign of being separated from your experience. You're holding yourself apart. It takes work to hold yourself apart and then create some kind of evaluation or judgment. People who meditate can learn and notice repeatedly how states of mind, activities, and judgments that seemed inherent melt away in meditation.

I've certainly sat in meditation and thought, "This is boring. This meditation, boy is this ever boring. When is it going to end? They should ring the bell." Then I say, "Wait a minute, Gil, maybe you should try just counting your breath and getting a little more concentrated." So I do. As I get more concentrated, that level of activity in the mind that's evaluating boredom quiets. Lo and behold, without that activity, I'm actually quite content and happy to be here. There's nothing boring right now because I'm not evaluating it as boring. Does that make sense?

It turns out there are a lot of things like that. I don't want to go through too many examples of it, but certain forms of sadness, even depression, might be part of this evaluative, active mind. Sometimes things are confusing, distressing, or there's been great loss. All kinds of things can happen. I don't want to diminish the sadness of loss, for example, but we have to appreciate what the mind is doing.

Sometimes there's a way of quieting the mind, stilling the mind: just don't do it. That is very respectful of our inner life because we're not overlaying so much stuff on top of it. We allow the heart to just show itself in some deeper way. If there is sadness that needs to be processed, sadness can be a very healthy and healing thing to feel, if we get out of its way. When the mind is busy, thinking, reacting, judging, or clinging, it doesn't allow for this deeper thing to happen.

So one of the little quotes or sayings that I hope you'll carry with you and use at the right time is: just don't do it. Simply stop, as opposed to having the pendulum swing to the other side. Rather than compensating, just stop. Trust yourself. Trust that it's okay simply not to do it. You don't have to prove yourself. You don't have to be a "good boy" or whatever. All you have to do is stop, make space, let something show itself, and get to know yourself. With time, we learn to trust a certain way of not doing. Not always reacting, fixing, or running away, but saying, "Okay, here I am. This is an uncomfortable situation. Just don't do anything with it. Just be with it and see what happens."

With time, what we learn is to trust the peaceful place and what arises from it. This is sometimes a very challenging thing to trust. There are a lot of messages from our society that we're supposed to be a certain way, that we're obligated to be a certain way. The message is that if you're not properly angry, properly distressed, or properly something, then you're a bad person, you're wrong, you're aloof, indifferent, or somehow part of the problem.

Maybe you are, but if you can trust this peaceful place, maybe there's a very different way to respond. A healthy way, an appropriate way that doesn't involve anger, distress, and fear. Oftentimes, people expect these reactions from each other as the vehicle through which we prove that we're right. If we're angry at something, it proves we understand there's a problem. The more I can be angry, the more I stake a claim that I know what's right and I'm on the right side. I don't know if that division that anger makes is healthy.

The Three Conceits

I'll venture into dangerous territory by giving some more examples of this. There is a teaching in Buddhism about the three kinds of conceit^[3]. Generally, we think of conceit as something not to do—not to be conceited. In Buddhism, conceit is seen as a form of suffering. People who have conceit suffer, in addition to whatever suffering they cause others.

There are three kinds of conceit. The first kind is the one that we in the English-speaking world most clearly associate with conceit: "I'm better than others," or some form of that. But in Buddhism, there are two other forms.

The second one is: "I'm worse than others." Some people might ask, "What? That's conceit?" It's conceit because it's an over-preoccupation with our own status in relationship to other people. So, thinking "I'm worse than others" means we're still caught in the grip of this self-definition, of being someone or not being someone.

The third form of conceit is particularly evocative or concerning for people in the United States, given some of the important values touted here. The third form of conceit is: "I'm equal to others." In this land, we're supposed to be equal. What's wrong with that? The problem with the equality conceit is that it's still a conceit. It's still a comparison, holding onto an idea of something.

So the question is, well, what's left? The alternative to those three is not to do the comparisons. Don't place yourself in comparison to anybody else. Just be yourself in some way without playing the comparison game. When conceit falls away, we are who we are, but we're not piling judgments and comparative thinking on top of it.

There's a tremendous amount of suffering in our society from all the different ways we live in comparison to each other. It's a radical thing to stop doing that.

At the same time, we have to be very careful with this kind of teaching, because this teaching is only meant for the domain of your heart and your mind. Don't play the comparison game, the conceit game, for yourself. We do live in a society where there is inequality. Not to recognize that is to fail to recognize the tremendous suffering in our society. We live in a society where some people hold themselves superior to others and keep other people pushed down. There are people who feel inferior to others; they've learned that and are struggling with it. These things exist. When we say in Buddhism not to play the conceit game—no superior, inferior, or equal—it has to do with what's going on inside of you. We should use our wisdom to recognize what's happening in society.

But when we see the inequality in our society, which is immense, are we supposed to get angry? Are we supposed to be distressed or afraid? There are people who expect us to be. If you're not properly angry, upset, or guilty, then maybe you're part of the problem. Maybe you are; it's complicated.

But in the Dharma, trusting that peaceful place inside means just stopping. Stop that judgment, stop the anger. Pay attention to the world; don't shut down or avoid what's going on. If you trust the peaceful place inside, maybe that peaceful place is not aloof or removed. Maybe there's a very different source of motivation for stepping up and trying to improve our society. It might come from compassion, generosity, or a deep sense of shared humanity and caring for each other. It might come from inspiration or joy. One of the ways to improve the world is to do what brings you a sense of joy and delight. To try to save the world while you're miserable—does that save the world? In Buddhism, there's a lot of emphasis on how we do things. There are important things to be done for our society, but how do we want to do them, and where is the source of motivation coming from? I'd like to propose that it can come from this peaceful place inside that we discover when we've learned: just don't do it.

What I'm referring to here is not doing a lot of the preoccupations and reactivity of the mind, the pendulum games we're caught in. Settle down. Be here. Trust yourself. Trust this peaceful place. If an action comes out of the heart, then just do it. Maybe it's easier to act when fear and inhibition have settled over time. Letting go of inhibition without coming from a deep place inside can be disastrous—saying whatever you want to say without care.

Use just don't do it as a vehicle, a means, a practice to discover this peaceful place inside that's not participating in the games, pendulums, or reactivities of the mind. It is a radical and powerful thing to learn to stop doing the things that are unhealthy for you. You don't have to compensate for that and become a saint. It's enough just not to do the harmful things, the difficult things, the ways your mind gets caught.

I think that's a radical message. It's enough just to stop some of the things you're doing. It's very respectful of ourselves, because we're learning how not to have too many cooks in the kitchen of our own hearts and minds. We are getting out of the way and allowing something to rise to the surface, learning perhaps that it's okay just to be alive. Just to be alive and breathing is plenty. We don't have to prove ourselves or compensate. But it is wonderful to learn to trust that peaceful heart and learn how we respond to the world from that place.

That's a radical thing. There are lots of people in our society who are responding from other places. But I think it's good for our society for people to start learning how to actively respond to the needs of the world, family, friends, and colleagues from this still, quiet, peaceful place inside. The fast way to discover it is that little practice: just don't do it. It is easier said than done, but maybe I've given you some perspective that you can try to use and explore today. Maybe if some of you are in your dungeon, you'll stop trying to pick the lock and try something else.

Thank you. We have a couple of minutes if any of you would like to make any comments, reflections, or questions.

Q&A

Speaker 1: Gil, my question is about habit. Of course, I'm not talking about myself here, but if somebody had a habit of being very judgmental, learning how to just not do that is a process. Could you say a few words about how to navigate that process? I suspect part of it is bringing awareness to when I find myself judging, and maybe meditating more to get into this peaceful place.

Gil Fronsdal: Certainly, meditation can be a great help if the meditation allows the mind to quiet down enough so the judgments are not there. Every time you drop into a deeper place, it's kind of like you're massaging the mind. You might have to do it repeatedly, but slowly something begins to give and your mind learns the lesson: "Oh, there's another way of doing this and it feels good." Having that contrast of a place that feels like a better alternative is a way of reconditioning the mind. That's if you have that ability in meditation.

If you don't, then follow some of the instructions we give on mindfulness of emotions. You want to bring mindfulness to the judgmentalism and study it in a more careful way. What's actually going on in the present moment? Not where it came from in your life, but how is it really going on here and now? What is the emotion behind it? If you can discover what the emotion is, can you sit quietly and just breathe with it and feel it? Maybe that emotion needs your attention more than the judgments. The judgments might just be the messenger. Don't kill the messenger. The message is not what the judgment is saying; the message is that you're hurting in some way. You're afraid, lonely, feeling inadequate, or there's a conceit. Some people judge a lot because they feel inadequate in themselves, and judging others is a way of feeling adequate. If others are bad, then I know I'm okay. But it's the conceit game. Stop and take a deeper look.

Speaker 2: Gil, thank you for the talk. I'd like to make two points. One is that boredom is considered a lack of focus, because if you're focused, you're not bored. The second point is, you've stressed several times in some of your talks that Dharma teachers often just say, "Just let go," or "Don't do it." But sometimes it's not helpful for Dharma teachers to say such a thing, because innate fears can have such a great grip that it's very difficult to just let go. In one of your talks on the jhānas^[4], you said the Buddha was a very wise teacher, which is why he substituted anxiety with pleasure. When you trade it, it's easier for people to change their focus to something else rather than just let go. Personally, the way I was able to let go of a lot of stress and anxiety was by tuning into the sensations in the body, and then going on to find something deeper.

Gil Fronsdal: Wonderful, thank you. We'll take one last question over here.

Speaker 3: Hi Gil, thank you so much for the talk. I really appreciated it. I remember hearing—I don't know if it was from a book I read or from one of your other talks—that there are 113 different emotions. I was thinking about how sometimes it's easier to embrace whatever you're feeling when you can recognize the specific emotion, but 113 is a lot. I just started reading a book called Atlas of the Heart^[5], which explores 87 different types of emotions. The author makes some references to Buddhism. It's really interesting because it shows how some things can be similar but different. I just wanted to bring it up to see if that would be helpful or something you'd ever want to look into.

Gil Fronsdal: Yes, I think developing emotional literacy is really helpful. Knowing the range of emotions and the distinctions between anger, irritation, ire, rage, and annoyance—being able to separate them and really see the distinctions—helps you become more familiar with it all. Some people have never really developed much emotional literacy, and it's just a vague sense of, "I'm feeling lousy." So I think it's a great thing to do. Thank you.

Okay, we should stop so we can have our tea. You're welcome to come up afterwards or meet outside for tea. You're all welcome to stay. The hot water dispenser is on the counter indoors, and there's tea in the drawer. Those of you who want to stay will meet outside to chat and say hello. I hope all of you stay. Thank you.