"Not-doing is so difficult and so powerful that you should not mention it," he went on. "Not until you have stopped the world; only then can you talk about it freely, if that's what you'd want to do."
Don Juan looked around and then pointed to a large rock.
"That rock over there is a rock because of doing," he said.
We looked at each other and he smiled. I waited for an explanation but he remained silent. Finally I had to say that I had not understood what he meant.
"That's doing!" he exclaimed.
"Pardon me?"
"That's also doing."
"What are you talking about, don Juan?"
"Doing is what makes that rock a rock and that bush a bush. Doing is what makes you yourself and me myself."
I told him that his explanation did not explain anything. He laughed and scratched his temples.
"That's the problem with talking," he said. "It always makes one confuse the issues. If one starts talking about doing, one always ends up talking about something else. It is better to just act.
Take that rock for instance. To look at it is doing, but to see it is not-doing."
I had to confess that his words were not making sense to me.
"Oh yes they do!" he exclaimed. "but you are convinced that they don't because that is your doing. That is the way you act towards me and the world."
He again pointed to the rock.
"That rock is a rock because of all the things you know how to do to it," he said. "I call that doing. A man of knowledge, for instance, knows that the rock is a rock only because of doing, so if he doesn't want the rock to be a rock all he has to do is not-doing. See what I mean?"
I did not understand him at all. He laughed and made another attempt at explaining.
"The world is the world because you know the doing involved in making it so," he said. "If you didn't know its doing, the world would be different."
He examined me with curiosity. I stopped writing. I just wanted to listen to him. He went on explaining that without that certain "doing" there would be nothing familiar in the surroundings.
He leaned over and picked up a small rock between the thumb and index of his left hand and held it in front of my eyes.
"This is a pebble because you know the doing involved in making it into a pebble," he said.
"What are you saying?" I asked with a feeling of bona fide confusion.
Don Juan smiled. He seemed to be trying to hide a mischievous delight.
"I don't know why you are so confused," he said. "Words are your predilection. You should be in heaven."
He gave me a mysterious look and raised his brows two or three times. Then he pointed again to the small rock he was holding in front of my eyes.
"I say that you are making this into a pebble because you know the doing involved in it," he said. "Now, in order to stop the world you must stop doing."
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"I've always been that way," I said. "And yet I want to change, but I don't know how. I am so inadequate."
"I already know that you think you are rotten," he said. "That's your doing. Now in order to affect that doing I am going to recommend that you learn another doing. From now on, and for a period of eight days, I want you to lie to yourself. Instead of telling yourself the truth, that you are ugly and rotten and inadequate, you will tell yourself that you are the complete opposite, knowing that you are lying and that you are absolutely beyond hope."
"But what would be the point of lying like that, don Juan?"
"It may hook you to another doing and then you may realize that both doings are lies, unreal, and that to hinge yourself to either one is a waste of time, because the only thing that is real is the being in you that is going to die. To arrive at that being is the not-doing of the self."
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