All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room. Blaise Pascal
Practise not-doing and everything will fall into place. Lao Tzu
Practise not-doing and everything will fall into place. Lao Tzu
It always perplexed me as a youth the possibility of the act of doing nothing (of 'sitting still'). Was it in fact possible to do nothing? Or was I dealing with a contradiction in terms, possibly a paradox, that negated itself as soon as it was mentioned? The intuition was there however, as I imagine it was in Pascal and many others, that it was in fact possible 'to do nothing' and simultaneously 'be good', but not within the boundaries of logic that had been set forth by the conventional usage of language.
The verb 'do' is not the most appropriate term to explain the process of, if we are to invert Pascal's claim, following the path of goodness. The last time I was asked what I 'did' for a living, (I just couldn't take it, the cliche, anymore), I answered (quite politely it has to be said): Isn't being enough?
Goodness does not require that one 'does' or for that matter 'makes' a living; rather, one is, simply... primally... fundamentally. Whatever emerges from that state of 'is-ness' cannot be said to be anything other than a product of being. In order to do, one must first be. (This is Pascal's 'sitting still'). It follows from this that if one is not 'being' then what you have emerging is not technically 'doing', but rather a case of forced-ness and contrivance where the verb is impure and tainted with ulterior motive. The motive and motion of being 'in and for itself' has thus been corrupted. Everything that emerges then, will also be corrupt, to a degree.
'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God'. [The Greek word logos is usually attributed here to signify 'Word', but the Latin equivalent is verbum].
The original verb is 'be'... in other words, 'In the beginning was the word....'
At the library this afternoon, I read a little Ratzinger (is it not time I acquaint myself with the writings - and there are many! - of the appointed spiritual leader of the Christian world of which I, nominally at least, am a member?) I was impressed (not too much as to be distracted) by his take on rest (on doing nothing), here, referring to the seventh day:
In other words, busyness is a neurosis, contrived activity, unnatural, counterproductive and Self-defeating. It is only through being still (or equally, stilling being) that one will come to know 'God'. Again, I hesitate with the term: I would much prefer Heidegger's rather more poetic 'whole draught of the Open' or Tillich's 'ultimate ground of being' (where [take a deep breath] the incandescence of being wells up from the depths within the widest orbit of the sphere of beings).
It is worth noting that 'doing' as a function of activity is perhaps closer to 'acting' than actually doing. This 'acting' can certainly convey more clearly and less ambiguously the idea that one is, at least temporarily, not being one's self. Further, as a matter of etymological curiosity, and to continue to propound the 'game' that life has become for most ('All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players...') the word 'act' derives from the same root as the word 'agony', from the Greek agonia meaning 'a (mental) struggle for victory,' originally denoting 'a struggle for victory in the games' ultimately from agon 'assembly for a contest'. In today's cut and thrust world of shallow economics, are we not all being assembled for the games?
On the subject of 'not acting', then, and 'doing nothing' (uncontrived activity which emerges through simply being), and to move across to the East, here is Lao Tzu in The Tao Te Ching:
Less and less do you need to force things
Until finally you arrive at non-action
When nothing is done
Nothing is left undone.
Here, Lao Tzu is saying that through 'being', the doer has vanished into the deed: there is no duality, no separateness, no observer no observed, no supercilious subject and object, only the 'Zone', only all-ecompassing (and equally all-emptying) Subject... The dancer has become the music. Now, it is the Music that dances...
Ratzinger writes:
To be sure, it requires more than one reading; our written language has not yet reached the clarity that we might hope for in such deep metaphysical analyses. But it is worth reading again.
Our selves only become relevant (and thus ultimate) when we begin to be, when we see that 'advaitic' relationship of the 'me' being with and within the whole draught of the Open, and the greater I (which D'Sa refers to as 'God'). This is what Whitman means when he writes, 'I give nothing as duties, what others give as duties, I give as living impulses'.
It is Zarathustra's 'freedom for itself and a sacred No even to duty'.
Doing and the 'slavery of activity' has dissipated into pure being, not contrived, not forced, but simply free. The I has dissolved beyond the confines of its corporeal limits into the music of the spheres, and beyond...
One is 'doing' nothing. Yet with the meaningful investment of being. Through this nothingness (which could equally be called an emptiness) comes fulfillment.
As an amusing paraph to these thoughts, some comedic relief perhaps from all that brain-work, it is interesting to note Woody Allen's comment at the end of the documentary Woody Allen (2012). As the film ends, and he tells us his niggling deep-rooted concerns (his 'hintergedanke') he is not without that wry inimitable laugh and the frantic waving of hands:
A profound insight, perhaps, into 'doing' and the 'slavery of activity'.
'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God'. [The Greek word logos is usually attributed here to signify 'Word', but the Latin equivalent is verbum].
The original verb is 'be'... in other words, 'In the beginning was the word....'
At the library this afternoon, I read a little Ratzinger (is it not time I acquaint myself with the writings - and there are many! - of the appointed spiritual leader of the Christian world of which I, nominally at least, am a member?) I was impressed (not too much as to be distracted) by his take on rest (on doing nothing), here, referring to the seventh day:
'...the people had rejected God's rest, its leisure, its worship, its peace, and its freedom, and so they fell into the slavery of activity. They brought the earth into the slavery of their activity and thereby enslaved themselves. Therefore God had to give them the sabbath that they denied themselves. In their 'no' to the God-given rhythm of freedom and leisure they departed from their likeness to God and so did damage to the earth. Therefore they had to be snatched from their obstinate attachment to their own work. God had to begin afresh to make them his very own, and he had to free them from the domination of activity. Operi Dei Nihil Praeponatur: The worship of God, his freedom, and his rest come first. Thus and only thus can the human being truly live.'
In other words, busyness is a neurosis, contrived activity, unnatural, counterproductive and Self-defeating. It is only through being still (or equally, stilling being) that one will come to know 'God'. Again, I hesitate with the term: I would much prefer Heidegger's rather more poetic 'whole draught of the Open' or Tillich's 'ultimate ground of being' (where [take a deep breath] the incandescence of being wells up from the depths within the widest orbit of the sphere of beings).
It is worth noting that 'doing' as a function of activity is perhaps closer to 'acting' than actually doing. This 'acting' can certainly convey more clearly and less ambiguously the idea that one is, at least temporarily, not being one's self. Further, as a matter of etymological curiosity, and to continue to propound the 'game' that life has become for most ('All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players...') the word 'act' derives from the same root as the word 'agony', from the Greek agonia meaning 'a (mental) struggle for victory,' originally denoting 'a struggle for victory in the games' ultimately from agon 'assembly for a contest'. In today's cut and thrust world of shallow economics, are we not all being assembled for the games?
On the subject of 'not acting', then, and 'doing nothing' (uncontrived activity which emerges through simply being), and to move across to the East, here is Lao Tzu in The Tao Te Ching:
Less and less do you need to force things
Until finally you arrive at non-action
When nothing is done
Nothing is left undone.
Here, Lao Tzu is saying that through 'being', the doer has vanished into the deed: there is no duality, no separateness, no observer no observed, no supercilious subject and object, only the 'Zone', only all-ecompassing (and equally all-emptying) Subject... The dancer has become the music. Now, it is the Music that dances...
Ratzinger writes:
'It becomes clear that we human beings are not bonded by the limits of our own little 'I' but we are part of the rhythm of the universe, that we too, so to speak, assimilate the heavenly rhythm and movement in our own bodies and thus, thanks to this interlinking, are fitted into the logic of the universe. [...] The rhythm of the heavenly bodies is, more profoundly, a way of expressing the rhythm of the heart and the rhythm of God's love, which manifests itself there.'This coincides with Raimon Panikkar's 'being a unique divine icon of reality, constitutively united with the Source of everything, a microcosm that mirrors the entire macrocosm...' The difference between 'having' (doing) and 'being' becomes clear. As Francis D'Sa, in the foreword to Panikkar's seminal Christophany - The Fullness of Man, states: 'Yes, I do have a 'me' but I am not identical with that me. 'My' 'I' seems to be found beyond that 'me'. Our 'I' (Panikkar calls it 'the small I') is neither relevant nor ultimate. The real I of our lives, or the I of my 'me' is not my I. Rather God is the I and I am his you. I and you are neither separate nor one; they stand in an advaitic relationship.'
To be sure, it requires more than one reading; our written language has not yet reached the clarity that we might hope for in such deep metaphysical analyses. But it is worth reading again.
Our selves only become relevant (and thus ultimate) when we begin to be, when we see that 'advaitic' relationship of the 'me' being with and within the whole draught of the Open, and the greater I (which D'Sa refers to as 'God'). This is what Whitman means when he writes, 'I give nothing as duties, what others give as duties, I give as living impulses'.
It is Zarathustra's 'freedom for itself and a sacred No even to duty'.
Doing and the 'slavery of activity' has dissipated into pure being, not contrived, not forced, but simply free. The I has dissolved beyond the confines of its corporeal limits into the music of the spheres, and beyond...
One is 'doing' nothing. Yet with the meaningful investment of being. Through this nothingness (which could equally be called an emptiness) comes fulfillment.
As an amusing paraph to these thoughts, some comedic relief perhaps from all that brain-work, it is interesting to note Woody Allen's comment at the end of the documentary Woody Allen (2012). As the film ends, and he tells us his niggling deep-rooted concerns (his 'hintergedanke') he is not without that wry inimitable laugh and the frantic waving of hands:
When I look back on my life, I've been very lucky that I've lived out all these childhood dreams: I wanted to be a movie actor and I became one; I wanted to be a movie director and a comedian and I became one; I wanted to play jazz in New Orleans and I played in street parades and joints in New Orleans and played in opera houses and concerts all over the world. There was nothing in my life that I aspired to that hasn't come through for me. But despite all these lucky breaks, why do I still feel that I got screwed somehow?
A profound insight, perhaps, into 'doing' and the 'slavery of activity'.
[Photo by Sharad Haskar, India, 2005]
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