Good for Nothing Zen: The Path of No Purpose

If you are practicing Zen meditation and hope to get something out of it, you’re doing it completely wrong.

Maybe you are meditating in order to attain enlightenment. Or you meditate to get a nice feeling out of it—you want to feel peaceful, you want to feel serene, you want to drop all the heavy weight you’ve accumulated from your day-to-day life.

Whatever your reason for doing Zen meditation, it’s completely wrong, and you are betraying yourself.

Buddha said that desire is the cause of suffering.

Whatever you desire to gain in your meditation will sooner or later make you suffer.

You want to have a good feeling? No worries—it will come to an end for sure, and you’ll feel bad again.

You want to be more compassionate? Wait until the next person says something “offensive,” and you won’t even remember what compassion is.

You want to let go of your small self and attain enlightenment? Then just get out of the way!

Your attachment to your small self is the reason why you think you are not enlightened in the first place. Wanting, wanting, wanting. We always want something. We always desire something. And if you want to let go of wanting, you’re not paying attention, because this is wanting too.

Lately, I’ve been reading books by Kodo Sawaki, a Soto Zen master who lived in the last century in Japan.

He talks a lot about "good-for-nothing Zen."

Here is a quote from him on doing zazen, sitting meditation: “What’s zazen good for? Absolutely nothing! This ‘good for nothing’ has got to sink into your flesh and bones until you’re truly practicing what’s good for nothing. Until then, your zazen is really good for nothing.”

Just to mention this, if you are a Soto practitioner, you may criticize me for saying zazen is sitting meditation. You’re probably right for doing so, but I don’t care. I’m not a Zen scholar, nor do I care about the concepts conveyed in the scriptures. The true dharma reveals itself in front of our face in every moment, and that’s why it’s not important to keep teachings in your head. Actually, let go of them all; otherwise, you won’t see what’s in front of you.

Now, back to Kodo Sawaki’s teaching. He says that zazen is good for nothing and that we have to let this "good for nothing" sink into our flesh and bones until we are truly practicing it. So, when you are sitting in meditation, just take a look at yourself. You will probably find some agenda behind what you are doing. As I mentioned before, maybe it’s enlightenment, a good feeling, more compassion, or maybe you’re even deluding yourself into thinking you will save the world if you just do it well enough. I think if we really want to do something for the world, we have to save it from ourselves. And I don’t care how noble you think your mission is, in the end, you’re probably causing more harm than good. Instead of following our desires, our wanting, why not try something completely radical?

Good-for-nothing Zen!

Doing sitting meditation without expecting anything. Doing it as if you are already dead. Just sitting for the sake of sitting, and nothing more.

“But what’s in it for ME?”

You see, we read all these spiritual texts, and we nod to everything they say. “There is no self, there is no ego, there is no purpose, we have to transcend our identities and ideas, and then we will find ourselves as the nothingness that we truly are.” “Only our desire makes us suffer, we have to let go of it.” And so on.

And then we feel really inspired, and we sit down to meditate, and we are sitting there basically thinking, “I want enlightenment, when does it finally come?”

If we are more experienced meditators, we already know that we deceive ourselves this way. Then, we just do the opposite. We sit down and force ourselves not to seek, not to want. We seek not to seek, and we want not to want. It’s the same game basically. But what would it be like if we really let this "good for nothing" sink into our flesh and bones when we are sitting? I know, it’s a completely radical idea, because from the human perspective, there is nothing to get from it.

Why would anybody do that?

And yet, we human beings with our little egos run around in life, always chasing after something, and before we realize it, we are dead and nothing of it mattered. And if you think you had some impact, then just wait a billion years to see if this is really true.

In a sense, we are already living a good-for-nothing life. So, why not do it properly?

When you are sitting in meditation, let go of all your wants and desires, let go of yourself, and just sit. Do it for the sake of sitting itself. Give yourself fully to just sitting there. Don’t meditate, don’t actively do something, just sit.

And if you catch yourself hoping to get something out of it, remember that you are doing it for nothing.

Give yourself fully to just sitting.

This is actually the greatest sacrifice you can make. This is true devotion; this is where spirituality actually begins.

And you don’t have to confine it to your sitting meditation. When you go through life, let’s say you are walking to a certain destination, don’t walk in order to get there. Just walk. Do it for the walking alone! Let go of your goals and your imaginations of where a certain action will lead you. This is good-for-nothing walking. When you are washing your dishes, don’t wash them in order to have them cleaned up. Just wash them. This is good-for-nothing washing.

You don’t have to force your ego, your small self, into not wanting anything. The ego’s job is to want things, so wanting it to want nothing just means you are attached to it. When a desire comes up, just look at it. This is good-for-nothing “just looking at what your ego does.” No problem as long as you don’t attach to it.

This is true freedom: freedom from our wanting, from our desires. Freedom from wanting something that’s not here right now. "Good for nothing" means acceptance of everything, just as it is. It’s a freedom beyond any human idea we have of freedom. 

Ok. I hope this article was good for nothing and that you did not gain anything from it.

Wish you all the best. 

Your friend of the way, Bye.

P.S. If you still feel lost and confused on your spiritual path, check out the link to my new online course on the fundamentals of spiritual awakening in the description. It’s a mini course, with a limited discount since I just launched it, and it focuses on waking up in this moment. No theories, no endless searching, just direct practice. Click here to learn more.