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The One Who Is Not Busy - Jim Podolske

The following talk was given by Jim Podolske at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 11, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Well, good evening. Welcome. As you know, we'll be sitting for 30 minutes and then at 7:45 I'll give a talk. So enjoy.

The One Who Is Not Busy

Good evening everyone. Welcome.

Diana's gone for four weeks. So I'll be teaching tonight, and then Maria Straatmann will be here next week and two weeks after that, and Kim Allen will be here in two weeks from tonight. So she's left you in good hands. If you remember, she finished her series on the Eightfold Path¹ just before she left. So she kind of left it up to me to decide what to talk about. So I'm going to talk about what's going on in my practice right now.

A couple months ago, in the middle of November, I retired from being an atmospheric scientist at NASA. I'd been there for over 44 years. The last 40 years as a civil servant, as a federal employee, and then four years before that in various other capacities. And then before that, I was in graduate school studying physical chemistry related to the atmosphere. So, I've been studying the atmosphere a long time, and it's been a fairly stable and continuous trajectory for me to be a scientist and working for the same employer basically for 40 years. And now I don't work for them. Now I'm retired—almost. I'm actually an unpaid volunteer. So I do mentor one of the scientists there, but only as I have time and the inclination.

One of the things that I noticed over the last, say, 10 or 20 years as some of my other colleagues have retired is they would often come back to Ames² and they would say that they were more busy in retirement than they were when they were working. And the reaction that I had—I didn't actually say this out loud, but I thought it was—I think you're doing something wrong. You know, I thought retirement was a time when you could do less, not be as busy. You could kind of have a more spacious life, a more relaxed experience.

In the 1960s, I used to watch this television show called Petticoat Junction. And there was a character, Uncle Joe, who would sit on the front porch of the hotel that his niece ran, and just take long naps in the afternoon and think up crazy get-rich-quick schemes, or go into town and play checkers with his friends. And I kind of thought that's what retirement was about. Just leading this life of relatively low activity. Almost no responsibility.

And then here I saw these other people were doing even more than they had been doing while they were working. So there's a little bit of a slow surprise to me.

There's a way in which I've always been somewhat averse to being busy. And I think part of that is that busyness could often lead to feeling rushed, to feeling hurried, to feeling anxious, frustrated, or just irritated. And so over my lifetime I've really looked at, how can I not be busy? How can I just take on less responsibility, fewer commitments? And when I heard these people actually going in the opposite direction, I was really taken by surprise.

Now, I realized that a lot of the things that they were becoming busy with as they retired were actually things that they found more personally satisfying or rewarding. They'd often do things like travel to parts of the world they had never been before, or maybe travel to places they had been before but really wanted to go back to. It wasn't uncommon that people would rent or buy RVs and make a slow trip around the country or around the continent visiting all of these places. Or they'd spend more time with family and friends. If they had children, they'd often go and visit their children and grandchildren, old friends, spend more time maybe fixing up their house or their garden, or whatever hobbies they had. So the busyness was in some way volitional, and it was, for the most part, selective to really do things that weren't being pushed down from above, but were really coming out of their own interests.

And so now I find myself in the position of, okay, well, how am I going to keep myself busy? Or maybe not keep busy, but what am I going to select to do? So that's part of my practice right now, is looking at what do I value and what's a good, beneficial way to spend my time. But I still find myself making commitments and becoming busier than I want to be.

It occurred to me after I retired that I remembered Gil³ giving a Dharma talk many years ago, which I was actually able to go back and find on AudioDharma, called Practice and the Busy Life. And so I went back and listened to that and from there did some more research about what he talked about in that talk back in 2012. And it was based somewhat on a Zen teaching. There's a Soto Zen koan⁴ about "the one who is not busy."

I don't have the whole text here, but basically what it's about is two brothers who go to a monastery. And in the monastery, they assign certain tasks to them. They have jobs to do. And one of them is out in the yard sweeping. And he's sweeping very vigorously, really going at it. And his brother comes by and looks at him and says, "Too busy." And the first brother looks back at him and says, "You forget the one who's not busy."

Now, it's a koan, so I wouldn't attempt to interpret it just on my own. But fortunately, there have been at least three books written about this by noted Zen teachers from the Bay Area. And one of them, Katherine Thanas⁵, used to run the Zendo down in Santa Cruz. And somebody actually even made my life easier for me by synopsizing her description of what was being taught there in a shorter article on the practiceofzen.com website.

So what I remember from Gil's talk was that when he was a young Zen student, he worked in the kitchen at Greens Restaurant. And working in the kitchen, he was a short-order cook. The lunch hour, maybe from 11:00 to 1:00, was really, really busy. They'd have 200 customers come in and he had to prepare side dishes and have them ready to go. And he said that could be exhausting. If you really just did that, you could get so swept up in it that by the time your shift was over, you'd be exhausted.

But he knew about this teaching about the one who is not busy. And so he would do his job as quickly and as efficiently as he could, but he always stayed in touch with that part of his awareness, that part of his mind that was not busy. That always had just enough time to pay attention to where he was, his body, what was going on, the people around him.

And so the flurry of activity could be quite great. But by being in touch with the mind that wasn't busy, he wouldn't get swept away. He wouldn't just lose track of himself, his feelings, and just get burned up.

And so that's been on my mind, and that's why I turned to this article and read about: what is the mind that's not busy? Who is the one who's not busy?

And there are basically three qualities of this not-busy mind that can be recognized and, I believe, can be cultivated.

The first quality is the awake mind. So that's the mind that's present for the present moment. Alert, relaxed, concentrated, and calm.

So in some ways, it's what our mindfulness practice is helping us develop, is this ability to be present. And as we work on this practice and also start working with the Five Hindrances⁶ that can get in the way, then we can be present in a way that's unclouded. That's as clear as possible, clear of greed, hatred, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and doubt. And an awareness that's free from egocentricity. So, an ability to see what's going on in as clear a way as possible that doesn't involve a sense of "me" or "mine," doesn't involve these other hindrances that cloud the seeing.

In Zen, they often describe this type of mind as taking a backward step. The way it was described was, if you went to a football game, the sports announcer is right in there describing every single play, detail by detail. Who's got the ball, who's he throwing it to, what's going on. Really wrapped up in the content of the game. But up in the Goodyear blimp looking down, you're just seeing the whole picture. You're just watching everything arising and passing.

And so taking that backward step is, you go from being really engaged in the content of your experience to stepping back and seeing the bigger picture. And so I think developing this awake mind is something that our mindfulness practice is working towards.

The second quality of the mind that's not busy is the mind of not knowing, or beginner's mind. And that's nimble and courageous enough to engage at close range.

How often do you go into a situation where you don't know, and you're willing to say, "I don't know"? I think one of the experiences that came to my mind about the mind of not knowing is, how is it for you when you meet somebody for the first time? Somebody introduces you to maybe a friend of theirs, or a family member, or a coworker. How quickly do you just look at them and already start making assumptions, or having some opinion, rather than just not knowing? Like, I have no idea who this person is. What do they like? What don't they like? What's their personality like? Do they agree with me or do they disagree? Are we going to be friends? Are we going to be enemies?

So that's one place where, for me, I can practice this. I can see: do I allow the mind of not knowing to just be there?

I find any number of my Dharma friends help model that for me. I know oftentimes when I'm talking to Diana, I'll ask her a question and I think, okay, well she must know everything, right? I mean, she's studied the suttas, she's gone on years of meditation retreats, she's quite accomplished and motivated. And some of the time she'll just say, "Well, I don't know." And I go, "How can you not know?" But I think she has such a confidence in that mind of not knowing that she can reveal it, and I find that very inspirational.

And then the third quality of the not-busy mind is the mind of readiness. The mind that alights nowhere, that's capable of both immediate and broader view.

Sometimes when I think of mindfulness, I do think of it as sort of like a fixed focal length camera. I'm looking in some direction, say I'm looking at one of you, and I try to see with as much clarity as possible. The mind of readiness can be one that can focus in when that's the most appropriate thing—really look in fine detail—and then also zoom out and look at the broader picture.

As I read this, I kind of thought, I wonder how long it would take to develop a mind that's not busy. And then as I thought of Gil's example of his time as a young man at the Zen Center, I realized I had a similar experience when I was in high school. I worked in the kitchen of a very large restaurant. Our dining room held about a hundred people and our banquet room held about 500. So working in the kitchen, particularly on a Saturday night, could be really, really chaotic. There are waiters and waitresses coming through, and the cooks, and the dishwashers, and the busboys.

And although I knew nothing about Buddhism, I knew nothing about mindfulness, I do remember that I was able to develop a mind that—at least some awareness of that was not busy. That wasn't totally absorbed in the task that was before me, but you had to be aware of what else was going on in the kitchen. People coming and going. You didn't want to run into them, so you could kind of watch what they're doing and almost predict where they were going to go so that you wouldn't run into them.

Working in the kitchen is kind of a dangerous place in the sense that there are hot stoves, hot ovens, hot grills, hot deep fryers, hot plates coming out of the dishwasher. And then hot food coming from the back kitchen. So whatever you're doing, there's always some part that needed to be aware of the bigger picture. Or you could get hurt. And then of course, we worked with sharp things: knives, shredders, a band saw for cutting the meat.

It hadn't really occurred to me until I started thinking about it, but those two years that I worked in the kitchen, I really developed that ability to always have a certain awareness bigger than just what was going on in front of me. And I made it through two years with only minor cuts, no stitches, nothing more than minor first-degree burns, and never being knocked over by somebody or knocking someone else over. So I think there was a type of mindfulness that just developed naturally in that environment.

And I think more recently another example would be just driving. If you're driving, particularly on the freeway, you know where you want to go. You know where you need to turn and things like that. But there's also a greater sense of being aware of your surroundings, of the other cars, the other trucks, maybe anticipating what they're going to do. And so that simple experience can be a continual training in being mindful. In having this mind of readiness to be able to respond to whatever comes your way on the street.

So I guess those are my thoughts on the one who's not busy. Kind of recognizing that I think we all have some capacity to be aware and curious about what's going on around us. And not get swept away, not get caught up in the stories about our experience, or just get caught up in the flurry of activity. Or at the very least, recognizing those times when we have gotten caught up and swept away, and making the effort to come back to be here in the present moment.

So, it's a work in progress for me. The older notion of retirement as being a time of becoming mentally and physically sedentary no longer seems as appealing as it did when I was younger. So engaging in a healthy and beneficial way with life and with other people is part of the practice. And having an ability to do that in a way that we don't get caught up and lost is important.

So those are my thoughts, and we have some microphones if any of you are interested in sharing your thoughts or your experiences of either having a mind that's not busy, or what your experience is of being carried away by busyness. That might be helpful for others to hear about. So, thank you. Hang on a second.

Q&A

Questioner: Thank you for pointing out busy mind. My question is really about practice, where my mind is always busy, like even when I sit. Do you have any recommendations on specifically how to find a restful mind quickly? Because I'm always, like, about 30 minutes into the meditation... that's 30 minutes, I'm like, "I finally..." you know. So it's kind of really trying to practice settling the mind when it's really busy all the time. It's meant to be busy because that's what our mind does. But I wonder if you have any thoughts about that, sort of in the practice, because it makes a lot of sense what you're talking about, and this is where I feel like I can at least try it out. So I wonder if you have any specific thoughts about that.

Jim Podolske: Okay. Yeah. Thank you for that question. I don't think we can make our minds be not busy. What we can do is acknowledge when the mind is busy with as much compassion and curiosity as we can muster. You know, just like, "Oh, this is what a busy mind is like. Wow, this is really incredible." And rather than try to fight it, embrace it.

One of the things that I didn't read from this article was about the mind of not knowing: "Not knowing is most intimate." So not knowing why your mind is doing it, or when it's going to stop, is really bringing some intimacy to your experience. And then just greeting that restless mind with some compassion, and then, to the extent possible, see if you can breathe through the busyness. Let the breath, wherever you imagine the busy mind to be, just let the breath move through that part of your body and see if it can bring some relaxation. So, I hope that's helpful.

Questioner: This is I guess a question, but you know, what does it mean to be busy? Because I was just thinking about this. In a way, being busy is, for me, it's often being just lost in the future. Like what is going to be happening, versus what's happening right now. And I went on a retreat about two months ago and I just was thinking that when I'm just thinking or trying to be aware of being present, then I feel less busy in a way. But I don't know, it just brings me back to, like, what does that mean to be busy?

Jim Podolske: Yeah, it's a great question. One of the people that I think about is Gil, who starts teaching at 7:00 in the morning and he teaches all day, and teaches retreats and things like that. And yet... so I think you can be very active, very engaged, do a lot of things, and also not be overwhelmed by it. So I don't think that there's necessarily anything wrong with being busy. But not being present is maybe more the issue.

I think one of the other things that I realized is, for me, that sometimes being busy is actually a way of hiding out. I don't think that's true all the time, but there are times when it's just like, "Well, I've got to look at my news feed, and then I've got to go over and send somebody an email." And busyness can be a way in which we can hide out from really seeing the things that are most important to us. So things like going on retreat can often be a time when activity can really slow down so that some of the shy parts of our psyche can find time to present themselves to us. So I think being able to take a break from a lot of activity so that we can see more deeply into our own hearts and minds is valuable. So hopefully that's helpful.

Questioner: Thanks for the talk. I had kind of a similar train of thought, or I was trying to understand, like, what does it mean to be busy, and try to unpack that. I don't know how in line it is with practice, but I work pretty much a corporate job and there's no shortage of digital tools that people have to stay busy, get others to be busy, and present all sorts of options for engaging. And so one of the things that I think helps or is kind of a reset is sometimes this thought comes up of either, "What's at stake? Like, what are the real stakes, or what's the worst that could happen?" Because naturally the mind is just like, "Oh, I can engage with this, I gotta do this, this thing came up, this thing beeped, this person." And it feels overwhelming because I feel like naturally, or at least I'm the type that's like, "Yeah, if I drop the ball or drop this plate or whatever, like something will happen." You can easily catastrophize. But those types of questions of like, "What's really at stake?" help you kind of cut through the noise, or the myths that we make in our heads of like everything is urgent and important. And a lot of times I've found, the more time I spend in these environments, it's like things kind of work themselves out. But you just don't know how it's going to happen. And it doesn't always have to be you engaging with these things, especially the digital things that pop up.

Jim Podolske: Yeah. Well, it's said that we live in a culture where the currency of our culture is attention. You know, there are all of these things that are trying to get a hold of our attention. I don't even have social media. I don't have a Facebook account or anything other than a telephone and email and text. So I do have connection, but not nearly as broad as I think many people do.

So as you asked that question, it occurred to me one of the practices that's taught here and other places is that of contemplation of death⁷. Like, part of uncertainty is we don't know how much time we have left. And so what is it that is most important for you in whatever amount of time you have left in this lifetime? So that's a type of reflection practice that you can do to maybe cut through and see more clearly what's valuable to you. Is it valuable to, I don't know, send out another message? Or... I mean, it might be. I'm not saying that getting engaged with other people through social media is without merit. But I think that it's also important to find some time to really look more carefully at what is most valuable to you. What are your values? And not get caught up in FOMO—fear of missing out. Like, "Oh, what if I don't, you know, I'm going to miss this, I'm going to miss that. I've got to go and see Taylor Swift the next time she's in town because..." And maybe developing a way to just appreciate what you do have, appreciate the present moment, so that that need for more doesn't dominate.

So I hope that's helpful, and thank you again for the question. Okay. Well, thank you all for coming tonight. I know you all lead busy lives [Laughter], and so hopefully you can go home and have at least some time of not being busy. So, thank you all.