alt Hacker NewsOne of the most concise and to-the-point explanations of meditation I've ever seen.
One thought I had while reading it: isn't trying to get more comfortable with doing nothing just another thing to do? isn't it another form of changing what already is?
EDIT: I'm advocating and practicing mindfulness but I always have this thought on the background and it's a real dilemma. Any thoughts?
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Buddha addressed this idea directly. Your instinct that "getting comfortable with nothing" is still doing something turns out to be exactly right, and Buddhism doesn't deny it. Its answer is basically: yes, you use one kind of wanting (the motivation to practice) to loosen a deeper kind of wanting (craving a specific outcome), like using fire to burn down a house, then the fire has nothing left to burn.
Meditation, in the Therevada tradition at least, never claimed to be nothing, it uses doing to undermine it.
Yes? Like trying hard to get into that state of meditation. Then you notice that you're getting tense and stressed about it not working, realize that this is not helpful, get angry at yourself for doing it wrong, try harder to do it right this time, etc.
It's my favourite puzzle about meditation. You have to approach it sideways, but if you really try that it won't work. So you try hard not to that instead, which won't work either. It's kind of funny how focusing on your breath tends to work, but... don't hold that thought.
It's a contradiction, and that's okay. Get comfortable with it ;-)