Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There

For just a moment in your frantically busy life, don’t just do something. Sit there.

We are, after all, called human beings, not human doings. Perhaps there is a message in that. Perhaps there is a hint. In the Soto Zen practice of Shikantaza meditation is called “just sitting”. Meditation is already doing far too much. We often have a goal when we meditate. We want to become peaceful. We want to silence our monkey mind. We want to become enlightened. This is doing. So just sitting is far better. But even just sitting is doing too much.

What about just being? Is that not enough? Just being what? you may ask. Not being anything at all. Just being.

In our helter-skeleter, always doing world, we are constantly trying to become something. We are trying to become better, smarter, thinner, more successful, more compassionate, more spiritual, more enlightened. We have completely forgotten how to simply be. We have forgotten this absolutely incredible, mind-blowing miracle of simply existing.

And this is why we’re always trying to become something else. We don’t have a clue of how amazing it is to simply be what we are because we don’t have a clue of what we are. And we’re never going to find out what we are if we don’t stop this constant doing and, for just a moment, take a breath and simply be.

We can’t make an effort to be. That would just be more doing. We have to stop doing, stop trying, stop thinking, just stop and simply be.

What could be easier than this? You already exist, don’t you? There, you have succeeded. Mission accomplished. Now relax. Take some time and savor the rewards.

How else can you discover who you are if you can’t simply be? This is not something you can discover in any book or spiritual teaching. This is not something you can discover through exhaustive spiritual searching and practices. It is far simpler than any of that. You are already It. Now discover what that It is. And you can only do that by simply being.