Busy doing nothing

George Clark, 27 January 2008

Over the festive season I met many people in what passes for relax mode. We were unhooked from the immediate demands of work and had 'time on our hands'. But what did we DO with it? There was not much enthusiasm for Thich Nhat Hahn's recommendation –

"Don't just do something, sit there".

I was aware of how 'busy-ness' allows an escape from stewing in our own juices. It is easy to get 'lost in work' and to one-pointedly move beyond space, time and ego. But it is not a good idea to stay in that state too long. It is all too easy to becomes obsessed with, and addicted to, busy-ness and to become a busy-body and workaholic. It is all too easy to fritter away your life with 'busy doing' and thus reach its end with no experience of 'peaceful being'. How many of us could sing along with Bing Crosby and his crew -

We're busy doing nothing, working the whole day through,
trying to find lots of things not to do.
We're busy going nowhere, isn't it just a crime?
We'd like to be unhappy but… We never do have the time.

From "A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur"
(Video clip)

BUT –withdrawal can be tough.

When you have made a habit of busy-ness it can be hard to embrace stillness and to face the frantic ego that looms large. A lot of buried mental stuff comes to the surface and has to be dealt with. Spiritual journeymen from times past talk of the 'dark night of the soul'. The road to peaceful bliss involves a roller coaster ride with  many ups and downs. There are cases of people having epiphanies and thus being suddenly 'born again'. But those people have usually gone through a long period of mental churn in gradual preparation for the turning moment.

I have been going through the mental churn for many years. There have been highs and lows along the way and I still don't have full confidence in a permanent shift to the brighter outlook. Old habits die very hard. The battle for mind control has to be waged thought by thought and minute by minute. It sometimes seems like pushing a boulder up a mountain – you cannot afford to stop or it will roll back down again.

So why bother?

I cannot speak for other people but I seem to have two reasons. (a) I have personal experience of sudden shifts of mood so I know that 'reality' is a mind-made thing and that it can be transformed in an instant (the blues are a state of mind) and (b) I am intellectually enthralled by the world view of the various mystics and by their psychology of perception . I am enamoured with the idea that the sunshine is always there and that the clouds can be blown away. I like to believe that there is a cure for the blues and that it is never too late to change your mind.

So what might we have DONE over the festive season? We might have made ourselves busy doing nothing and perhaps tasted the peace that passes all understanding.

Sitting quietly doing nothing
Spring comes and the grass grows by itself
(Zen Proverb)