You remember Jerry Seinfeld. He’s the real life comedian who played himself as a comedian named Jerry Seinfeld in the sit-com “Seinfeld” where he pitches a sit-com to a TV network to play himself, Jerry Seinfeld, in a sit-com about nothing. Since the show ended 10 years ago, (can you believe it’s been 10 years?) Seinfeld, despite doing stand-up and a movie, feels that he is doing a whole lot of “nothing”. Presumably he means that because his everyday life is rather ordinary in comparison to the days when he was involved in the sit-com, he feels like he’s not doing anything. So much so that his “doing nothing” has become the subject of his rare stand-up performances.

Here is a part of one routine: “Everybody says to me, “Hey, you don’t do the show any more. What do you do? I’ll tell you what I do; nothing…. Well, let me tell you, doing nothing is not as easy as it looks, because the idea of doing anything, which could easily lead to doing something, would cut into your nothing, and that would force me to have to drop everything.”

Not really that funny, but there may be some wisdom here.

Not long ago, Jake Sensei mentioned to me that he had had the thought that he should tell me to stop painting. This is the same guy who has been encouraging me to incorporate my painting into my Zen practice. He told me that it was just an idea that came to him and that he had no intention of following up on it, but it got me wondering what the heck I would do with myself if I wasn’t painting. Since I don’t really have anything else I am hankering to do, I’m sure that, like Seinfeld, I’d be faced with nothingness. I suppose that from a Zen point of view, having to grapple with that would not be a bad idea. However the Seinfeld routine gave me another way to think about all of this.

What I hear Zen Master Jerry telling me is that regardless of whether I continue painting or not, I can and should let go of the “idea” of doing painting. (Maybe this is what Jake wanted me to ponder.) What Seinfeld seems to be saying is that ideas about how we should be in life undermine the quality of life. Whether it is painting or any other daily activity, thoughts about what you could or should be doing will get in the way of what you are actually doing. Going through the actions of painting are not particularly remarkable and could easily fit Seinfeld’s definition of “doing nothing”. However, to the extent that I get caught up in being “a painter” I risk loosing the joys associated with “just painting”. In the larger scheme of things, this is the “everything” that Seinfeld says he will lose if he lets ideas of “doing something” intrude on his “doing nothing.”

A Zen Saying:

Sit quietly, doing nothing,

Spring comes, and

The grass grows by itself.

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