What are "Doing" and "Being"?
*I recently gave a talk on the Insight Timer app on the topic of “Doing” and “Being” and thought I would summarize the message for this weekly post…
You may be familiar with the idea that there are two basic modes of living: one of Doing, and one of simply Being. We may become stuck in the mode of constantly Doing, constantly working on something, constantly stimulated, or distracted, both Doing externally with actions and internally with thinking, worrying, planning. And we may forget how to simply Be, without the need to Do, or to change, anything.
A meditation practice, or generally the practice of what you might call “mindfulness,” may be like a re-training of the ability to Be. To simply Be with another person, to Be in nature, to Be in your day to day life.
But I think this is one concept that, like many fundamental concepts, you can sort of understand intellectually, but then struggle to actually implement it in your life in a meaningful way. So my goal here is to help clarify the essential difference between Doing and Being in a way that you can practically experiment with. There’s a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh that illustrates this difference:
”The ground for action is to Be,
and the quality of your Being
determines the quality of your Doing.”
In the quote, Thich Nhat Hanh is referring to these two core modes of experience, and describing their inseparable relationship with each other. But what really are these two modes?
DOING:
In the Doing mode, there is inherently a problem to be solved. There is some discrepancy between how things are right now and how you want them to be. So, you then take action to resolve that discrepancy, to solve that problem, and then immediately move on to the next available problem and begin working to resolve it.
A good example is the sensation of thirst. If you’re thirsty, that’s your current discrepancy. And you can act to resolve this discrepancy (if you’re so fortunate to have easy access to water) by opening the cabinet, picking up a glass, going over to the sink, filling the glass with water, and taking a drink. Problem solved. Then, your mind likely moves immediately to the next discrepancy. That’s the Doing mode. A constant series of actions to make my current situation closer to how I want my current situation to be.
And the Doing mode is great for getting things done externally, like the example of satisfying your thirst with a glass of water. But a problem can occur when it comes to internal experiences, those that you can’t necessarily resolve by “Doing” something. This applies to emotional experiences like anxiety, anger, and sadness, for example, and this is where the Doing mode can often actually make things worse.
We may fight against our internal feelings, which is like struggling and sinking in quicksand, or by distracting ourselves in order to distance ourselves from the feeling. Through distraction, however, the feeling only grows and comes back bigger and with sharper teeth the next time. Then, when it inevitably comes back, we need to distract again, and that’s the negative reinforcement cycle that creates addiction. The internal feeling doesn’t go away, we just keep covering it up while it continues to fester beneath the surface.
I call this form of Doing “internal friction.” We get stuck constantly wanting things to be at least slightly different than they are right now, or we want to be distracted and become unconscious of how things are. And I think this can turn into a very mechanical/robotic existence. I wake up in the morning and then I’m propelled by a constant stream of actions to either make my current situation different than it is, or to distract myself from my current situation (another form of making it different).
You may even be experiencing this now. Ready to be done reading this, and thinking of what you’re going to do next, or what you need to be doing later. Or maybe adjusting the way you’re sitting or scratching an itch on your nose. Or feeling bored, or anxious in some vague way. Life can feel like an endless cycle of Doing, of friction, of never being fully settled. And we might feel like this is our only option, particularly within the modernity of omnipresent stimulation.
But, there is another option, the mode Thich Nhat Hanh referred to: the Being mode.
BEING:
In the Being mode, there is no problem to solve, nothing to “Do” per se, but only to experience how things are right now and to have no desire for them to be any different than they are, at all, just right now in this moment. You might even take a few seconds now to play with this feeling. What is it like to take a moment, stop any sort of Doing, and let everything be exactly as it is? Just let go of any desire for your experience to change, no matter what, for a few seconds…
From my perspective, the ultimate essence of a meditation practice, or a “mindfulness” practice, or of “spirituality,” or whatever you might call it, is to develop the capacity for Being, to develop openness to what is actually happening only in this moment, and to simultaneously let go of habitual resistance (friction) against it. And then, if you can genuinely switch into this mode of no resistance, so much more is simultaneously revealed to you.
The Being mode is like the space between what happens in life and your reaction to it. In the Doing mode we get stuck on a loop of automatic reactions with very little space between what happens and how we respond, and life becomes a predictable series of habitual behaviors and thinking patterns. Stimulus-reaction-stimulus-reaction-stimulus-reaction, and so on. To me this is sort of like sleepwalking.
The Being mode allows us to become aware of what is happening and then, in that space of awareness, notice our tendencies to react in particular conditioned ways (e.g., becoming defensive in an argument), and then have more and more possibility to respond however we might most deeply like to in this one Brand New Moment.
That moment of Being is kind of like letting some air out of a balloon instead of blowing it up until it pops. We just might not have known that we even had the option to let some air out. You could use the exhale to remind you of this in daily life, of your ability to let air our of the balloon, to let go of Doing and exerting effort, even if just for a moment. That moment of returning to a deep exhale will interrupt and change the momentum of your entire day. By letting some air out of the balloon, embodying some of that space between stimulus and response, you’re creating a world of new possibility both for yourself and others, and you’re opening yourself to all that is available only Right Now.
To me, the fact that I am simply alive is a miracle. And whenever I can stop automatically blowing up my balloon, and slow down long enough to remember this True Miracle, that is beyond all comprehension, that I am alive Right Now and my whole life is encapsulated in This Moment, then I become filled with a new revitalized perspective that often dissolves whatever internal friction I might have been feeling (e.g., frustration, anxiety, annoyance, anger, boredom, etc.).
One particular way in which it might be worthwhile to experiment with this Being mode, is by noticing the Doing of thinking. We can become so tied to our thinking mind that it may feel as if we are our thinking mind. But there is something that is aware of thinking, that does not use or need language. There is everything that happens, both externally and internally, and then there is this awareness beneath it all. Notice the next thought you have, and notice how your awareness of the thought is ultimately not quite the thought itself, it exists behind or under the thought. At any moment, you can return to this underlying awareness. And that is the final step. Nothing further to do. Just rest in that awareness, as many times as you can remember, and you will be cultivating and building a reservoir of Being inside of you to return to. Keep returning to this vast open space of awareness behind thinking, the space of Right Now, of this one moment, the only one you’ll every really have, and you don’t know how many you’ll get like it, so you might as well BE IN IT FULLY.
A helpful reminder that I use in this practice of noticing internal Doing is saying to myself the following:
”Ah, that, too, is thinking.”