Jon Kabbat-Zinn’s definition of Non-Striving:

• Meditation has no goal other than for you to be yourself. The irony is you already are. I would add: Being alive has no other goal than for you to be yourself!
• Paying attention to simply whatever is happening in the moment rather than ‘trying to get anywhere’ or ‘accomplish anything’ but the investigation itself.
• If you are thinking ‘I am going to get relaxed this time’, this introduces an idea into your mind of where you should be and along with that comes the notion that you are not okay as you are right now.

 In our lives we can practice non-striving, or non-doing, just allowing things to be as they are without trying to change anything. The way I relate to this is that of course we are still going to have goals and things we want to accomplish. But how are we going about it? And if things are not turning out the way we think they should, how do we respond? Are we pushing the river when it is clear that something is off or just not working? Are we able to let go and just let things happen rather than pushing to make things happen?

It reminds me of “Wu-Wei” the Taoist definition non –doing:  Wu Wei is an important concept of Taoism and means natural action, or in other words, action that does not involve struggle or excessive effort. Wu Wei is the cultivation of a mental state in which our actions are quite effortlessly in alignment with the flow of life.

In practicing meditation and in life, non-striving means to be nothing more than who you are moment to moment. If you are feeling sad – feel sad without striving to be happy. If you are angry and frustrated – be angry and frustrated without striving to change it. If you are restless and agitated while meditating then that is what is happening – no need to try and make yourself be relaxed and at ease. So I see this as being with what is moment to moment. Sounds easy but in practice it can be challenging as we are always “striving” to have things be different than they are!

I know I have had many moments of going against the flow of life while striving for a goal or something I wanted to have happen. And with it came suffering and frustration.

Non – Striving is when I sit down to write a blog, newsletter or a talk and the words are flowing effortlessly. However there have been times I sit down to write and it is an effort. I can’t concentrate or focus and keep looking at Facebook as a diversion and still keep coming back to write, get frustrated and go back and look at Facebook again………..in those moments it would be so much more productive to just go and take a walk at the beach or play with my cat because it just is not happening!

Or I have pushed myself to clean the house or cook food when I am tired and I leave something out of the dish I am preparing or overcook it and burn the pan or crash into the furniture with the vacuum and dent the table. Striving to reach a goal when it is just not in the flow is striving and swimming upstream.

How about you? When are you in the flow of life and when are you striving to make something happen? What are the occasions when you strive to have a different experience than the one you are having?