Hard to Do Nothing

 Someone in the group meditation tonight had remarked about how difficult it is to do nothing, and my thinking is that--the best way to do nothing is not to try to do nothing at all. For instance, if I say "I am doing nothing", often what it means is that I am refraining from doing what I believe is socially acceptable. The "doing nothing" is referring to a kind of rebellious stance against something which I don't want to do, for whatever reasons. But if I am no longer thinking of either 'doing something' or 'doing nothing', then even 'doing something' is not felt to be something. Conversely, not doing something is not experienced as nothing! What a crazy paradox, right? In Zen, I think that this attitude simply refers to not making anything of any sort into an object that supposedly exists outside the mind. 
   The way of 'doing nothing' is not to get rid of all the somethings, but rather to relate to those somethings as processes that come and go. So far as I can see everything as impermanent, then there is no obstacle: I work when I need to, eat when I need to, rest when I need to, and so on. I don't have this idea in mind that I should do y while I am doing x, or vice versa. And even when I am doing x, I am not having an idea that I should do x... I could just as easily pick up y in that moment! But there is no struggle in my mind between the two of them; they are parts in the same whole, so why would they compete. If I think that work has nothing to do with eating, then I will try working without any food and see what happens! When things interconnect, there are no competing aims. They are just passing things that need doing.