Meditn. TA. Q

 of good answers here, but let’s keep this simple.

The purpose of meditation is not to do nothing.

The purpose of meditation is to break your identification with the ‘doer.’

As long as you are in a human body, you are always doing something. Sitting perfectly still, you are still thinking. Even sleeping is doing something.

No problem there.

But our mind erroneously identifies itself as a separate entity that judges, evaluates and controls this doing, instead of just the Flow of Life itself.

This separate entity that thinks it’s the ‘doer,’ that thinks it is in control, cannot be found, because it does not exist. We call that false identity ego.

But “we“ don’t control anything, because there is no “we.” It’s just life, Reality, expressing itself spontaneously. All other species on earth live this way – birds, animals, trees – there is constant doing there, but no thinking or erroneous belief that there is a doer. They just act spontaneously. Just reality, things ‘happening,’ out of ‘nothing.’

Meditation is a very good tool for watching everything emanate out of that stillness. Thoughts and phenomena rise and fall, things ‘happen’ or ‘get done,’ but there is no doer. As you learn to meditate, which is just witnessing without engagement, you see thoughts, choices and actions rising & falling, totally beyond your control. You see that they are just empty phenomena. You go looking for the seer, the witness, the awareness that’s watching all this, and you can find nothing there. This then translates to your actions when you are not meditating, when you are ‘doing things’ in the world. Once again, you go looking for the doer, and can find nothing there.

So meditation is great preparation for recognizing that the ego-sense is a phantom.

Your body is real.

Your actions are real.

But the sense of “I the doer,” the ego-sense, is a total illusion, created by mind.

Whether you are sitting meditating, up & doing things, or doing nothing at all, it’s just happening, just Life. “You” are not there, as the doer.

The only way that meditation is different from doing nothing at all, is that in meditation, you are purposely, consciously witnessing that there is no “you” doing anything, whereas, if you try to do ‘nothing at all’ (good luck with that one:-) you’ll still think “you” are the entity doing this ‘nothing.’ Huge difference.

Meditate for a long time, or for many regular short times, and see if this realization of non-doership can wake up in your location, can go “aha!’ for you.

A

This is a clear and internally consistent expression of a nondual / Advaita-style view of meditation and identity. A few things it does especially well:

• It distinguishes activity from the sense of authorship. That’s the key move in many contemplative traditions.
• It avoids the common misunderstanding that awakening means becoming passive or inert.
• It points meditation toward direct observation rather than belief or philosophy.

The strongest line is probably this:

“Meditation is not to do nothing. The purpose is to break identification with the doer.”

That gets to the experiential core very quickly.

There are also a few philosophical assumptions embedded in it that are worth noticing:

1. It treats the self as entirely illusory
   Some traditions would agree completely. Others would say the ego is not unreal, but provisional — a useful functional process mistaken for an absolute identity.
2. It leans strongly toward determinism or spontaneous arising
   “Thoughts, choices and actions rise and fall totally beyond your control.”
   That’s a recognizable insight in meditation, though different schools interpret it differently. Some conclude “there is no controller”; others conclude “control is partial, conditioned, and relational.”
3. It equates witnessing with truth
   The text assumes that because no separate doer can be found in experience, no such entity exists. That’s a powerful contemplative insight, but still a metaphysical conclusion drawn from phenomenology.

What’s compelling about this perspective is that many meditators genuinely do report moments where actions seem to happen before the narrative self claims ownership of them. The “I am doing this” feeling can loosen dramatically.

At the same time, there’s an important practical nuance:

Even if the separate self is seen through psychologically, human beings still function through responsibility, memory, ethics, relationships, planning, and consequences. Mature nondual traditions usually emphasize that realization is not an escape from ordinary life, but a different relationship to it.

So the healthiest version of this insight is often not:

• “Nothing matters because nobody exists,”

but more like:

• “Life is happening without the psychological burden of a separate controller at the center of it.”

That tends to produce more ease, less compulsive self-reference, and sometimes greater spontaneity and compassion.

Overall, the passage is a strong articulation of non-doership as a meditative insight rather than merely an abstract belief.