Reconciling approaches

I have a new challenge. I've reconciled (in my own mind, anyway) the instructions of Mahamudra, pieces of Taoism, Zen, and modern-day Advaita. At their pinnacle is formless practice: do nothing, and everything is done. There can be no object of meditation, no matter how subtle, because any act of meditating is conceptual and effortful. Of course, at the pinnacle, there can be no meditating because there is no meditator, but most instructions suggest getting there via non-meditation.

On the other hand, I think that Ramana Maharshi (a 20th century Advaitin) and Heshang Moheyan (an 8th century Chan monk) are both realized beings, and they have a very different idea of what to do. Moheyan's teachings may have been banished from Tibet, but Longchenpa and Jigme Lingpa hold him in high regard. Jigme Lingpa says:

During the debate, Kamalaśīla asked what was the cause of saṃsāra by the symbolic action of whirling his staff around his head. [Hashang] answered that it was the apprehender and apprehended by the symbolic action of shaking his robe out twice. It is undeniable that such a teacher was of the sharpest faculties. If the non-recollection and non-mentation entail the offense of rejecting the wisdom of differentiating analysis, then the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras of [the Buddha] also entail this fault. Therefore, what the view of Hashang actually was can be known by a perfect buddha, and no one else.

 So what was his teaching? From what we can gather (not much of his teachings remain):

Moheyan held that all thought (thinking and ideation) prevented enlightenment.

...
To rid oneself of all conceptions, one must practice meditation, trance, and contemplating the mind: “To turn the light [of the mind] towards the mind’s source, that is contemplating the mind.”

Maharshi says:

If one then enquires `Who am I?', the mind will turn back to its source [the Self] and the thought which had risen will also subside. By repeatedly practising thus, the power of the mind to abide in its source increases. ...

As and when thoughts rise, one should annihilate all of them through enquiry then and there in their very place of origin.

With my current limited abilities, turning the mind toward its source and keeping it there is still an act of meditation. It feels very different than practicing non-meditation, in which experience is not manipulated in any way. Maybe the key to the conundrum lies in this bit:

Question: And so rejection of thoughts is not necessary?

Ramana Maharshi:  No. It may be necessary for a time or for some. You fancy that there is no end if one goes on rejecting every thought when it rises. It is not true, there is an end. If you are vigilant and make a stern effort to reject every thought when it rises you will soon find that you are going deeper and deeper into your own inner self. At that level it is not necessary to make an effort to reject thoughts.

Question: Then it is possible to be without effort, without strain? 

Ramana Maharshi:  Not only that, it is impossible for you to make an effort beyond a certain extent.

So both non-meditation practice (I think of this as "fake it til you make it non-doing") and self-enquiry lead to true non-doing. The question is, how does one decide which to practice? Actually, come to think of it... zomg... Alan Wallace teaches a method from Padmasambhava, in which one inverts the attention back toward the source, and then releases it, periodically. The point of this practice? To break through to rigpa!

Withdrawing from all appearances and really focusing with effort, invert your awareness on being aware. Utterly relaxing, release your awareness into space with no object. Invert on your sense of being the meditator, the agent doing the inversion. Invert on your sense of being the observer or subject experiencing your own awareness, and observe closely. ...

In other words, Padmasambhava is suggesting cycling between the Maharshi/Moheyan approach and the classic "just rest" approach.

Welp, that's my epiphany for the day.

Edit: actually, it occurs to me that Adyashanti has said something similar before. He advocates non-doing as well as introspection. I'll have to go back and re-listen to his True Meditation series. That really nailed it.