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YOGA 101 (/CATEGORY/YOGA-101/)

Being vs. Doing

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YOGA 101 (HTTP://WWW.YOGAJOURNAL.COM/CATEGORY/YOGA-101/)

BY STEPHAN BODIAN | AUG 28, 2007

If you practice hatha yoga (/basics/820), youre no doubt familiar with this scenario: Youve had an invigorating and
inspiring practice session in which your mind was totally focused on your body and your breath. By the time
youre done, you have a deep sense of peace and relaxation that seems to pervade every cell. You feel centered,
balanced, in touch with yourself. You vow not to let this feeling slip away as the day progresses.
But halfway through the work day, youre overwhelmed by the press of urgent emails and encroaching deadlines,
and youve completely lost the connection and composure you had. Even more disturbing, you have no idea how
to get it back. Its as if a door has closed on a deeper dimension, a place of balance and ow, and you cant gure
out how to open it again. By the end of the day, youre frazzled and stressed out, and you cant wait to get home
to your yoga mat.
Of course, you dont have to be a hatha yogi to be acquainted with this terrain. Perhaps you nd your connection
to being through tai chi or running, walking in nature or playing with your children. Whatever the activity, you
enter a zone where you feel poised, open, relaxed, and attentive. In the midst of the doing, theres a sense of
enjoyment, fulllment, and alignment with a deeper current of aliveness. But as soon as you position yourself
behind the wheel of your car or sit down in front of your computer, you tense your shoulders, hold your breath,
increase your speed, and lose touch with yourself. What happened, you wonder. How did I lose my balance?
Where did I go wrong?

The Crucible of Everyday Life

As a zen teacher and psychotherapist, Ive worked with hundreds of meditators, hatha yogis, and spiritual seekers
who agonize over this issue. Theyve read the latest books, heard the teachings, attended the retreats, practiced
the techniques diligently, and vowed to implement them. Yet they continue to be seduced back into their old
habits and routines: overbooking their schedules, speeding up to match the pace of their technological devices,

completely forgetting to stop, breathe, and be present. Instead of bringing what theyve learned on their
meditation (/practice/meditation/) cushion or yoga mat to the crucible of everyday life, they lose their balance and
go unconscious again and again.
Theres no question that we live in uniquely challenging times. Were working longer hours, taking fewer vacations,
and feeling more hurried and stressed than ever before. At the same time, our lives are changing more rapidly,
and we can no longer rely on keeping the same job or partner for a lifetimeor even for the next few years. As a
result, were constantly confronted with major life choices that seem to threaten our physical survival and require
that we spend more time than ever in our minds, assessing and deciding. Our lives are extraordinarily complex,
says psychologist Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., author of Inner Peace for Busy People (http://www.amazon.com/InnerPeace-Busy-People-Borysenko/dp/1401902146), and were being bombarded with choices, both signicant and
trivial, that demand a great deal of eort and energy to make.
Not only do our lives move faster, but they also lack the ow of simpler times, when the measured rhythms of
nature and physical labor modeled an intrinsic balance between being and doing. These days were pulled
staccato from one urgent input to another, from cell phone to email, PalmPilot to pager, forced to mold our
analog bodies to the digital age. The sheer volume of information impinges on us and keeps us in a state of
physiological arousal, says Borysenko.
Given the unprecedented demands of postmodern life, perhaps we just expect too much of ourselves. Without
the supportive structure of sacred communities like monasteries and ashrams (/lifestyle/1214), in a secular world
that seems to be spinning insanely out of balance, is it really possible to stay consistently connected to just being
while pursuing material success, a healthy body, a fullling relationship? Whats new to our times is not that were
having diculty maintaining balance, but that so many people who dont live in monasteries have awakened to
the spiritual dimension and dont quite know how to nd a place for it in their lives, observes Buddhist
psychiatrist Mark Epstein, author of Going on Being: Buddhism and the Way of Change
(http://www.amazon.com/Going-Being-Buddhism-Way-Change/dp/0767904613).
Certainly regular retreats and workshops can help. As we deepen and expand our awareness, we nd it easier to
notice when were lost in striving so we can more readily reconnect with the present moment. But intensive
practice is not necessarily a panacea. In fact, Ive watched many clients, friends, and colleagues struggle with the
transition from retreat to everyday life. After my rst vipassana retreat in 1980, I saw a legitimate way to slow
down and relax, says Anna Douglas, a founding teacher at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California.
I was given permission to move at the rhythm of life. Then I entered a phase of trying to make my life like this all
the time. I got rid of my belongings, became a retreat junkie, and dreaded going back into the world. As her
practice matured, however, Douglas saw that she needed to integrate retreat life and daily life. Meditation
teaches us the value of being, but we need to bring this being quality into the doing world.

The Ultimate Forgetting

The deeper question is, What prevents us? In a memorable exchange with my teacher, Jean Klein, a master of
Advaita and Kashmiri yoga, I asked him whether it was possible to stay connected to being in the present even in
the most dicult life situations. He invited me to see that I was trapped in a world of spiritual concepts and to
notice the moments in daily life when the sense of a separate me was absent. I stopped to absorb what he had
said. Yes, I responded nally, I know what youre talking about. But somehow I keep forgetting. Ah, forgetting,
he said, with a knowing smile. The ultimate forgetting.
Despite our best intentions, there seem to be powerful inner forces at work that induce this ultimate forgetting
and sabotage our genuine attempts to create balance and peace in the midst of activity. From my experience with
clients, friends, and my own spiritual unfolding, here is a list of the most inuential:

Our self-worth is linked to our accomplishments. As children, were asked by well-meaning relatives, What do
you want to be when you grow up? As adults the rst words out of our mouths when we meet for the rst time
are What do you do? The message is clear: Were valued for what we contribute, not for who we really are. Since
we all want to be loved and appreciated, theres an enormous incentive to work harder and faster but hardly any
encouragement to slow down, do less, and enjoy life more. This further fragments our already disjointed lives and
drains away the spontaneity. Even over-scheduling wonderful things can take the joy out of life, says Douglas.
Were driven by a relentless inner critic. Most, if not all, of us have internalized a deeply ingrained set of beliefs
about duty, perfectionism, and responsibility that have been passed down through the generations. Theres a
suspicion in our culture about being, says Douglas. Our puritan ethic teaches us to be productive and
responsible. Our mission in life is to acquire, to accomplish, to succeed. Were taught that were inadequate as we
are and need to improveand spiritual teachings can merely compound this low self-worth by relentlessly
encouraging us to compare ourselves (unfavorably, of course) to some lofty spiritual ideal: What, you cant stop
your thoughts at will, or remain in Headstand (/poses/481/) for ve minutes, or feel compassionate in all
situations? Because it apparently has the best of intentions, the spiritual critic is especially insidious; while driving
us to be exemplary meditators or yogis, it can cut us o from the inherent perfection of being, which is always
available.
Were afraid of losing control. If we really slowed down to a more balanced pace and took time to enjoy life,
what might happen? Would anything get done? Would we survive? Frightened of loosening our grip and freefalling into an imagined abyss,we struggle to impose our agenda on life while contracting away from the natural,
ever-changing, and unpredictable ow of being. Like Arjuna on the battleeld when Lord Krishna reveals his
splendor in the Bhagavad Gita, the mind is innately terried of being because it represents mysterious,
unexplored terrain. In fact, the minds job is to resist the unknown and create a false ground of security,
constructed of beliefs and identities designed to protect us from the groundlessness of impermanence and
change. As the great spiritual traditions teach, however, our essential nature is far vaster than the mind can
encompass.
We make a strong demarcation between sacred time and secular time. Sure, its OK to be present on my
meditation cushion or yoga mat, we tell ourselves, but the rest of the time I have too much to do. So we
compartmentalize our lives into sacred and secular, being and doing, and reserve our sadhana for certain
prescribed periods each day. The secret is to view every moment as fertile ground for practice, as yet another
opportunity to wake up to the beauty and sacredness of life.
We lack the commitment or motivation to stay present. Despite our repeated vows to remain balanced in all
situations, our loyalties are divided between our spiritual aspirations and the eeting satisfaction of excitement,
accomplishment, and acquisition. Why do we get knocked o our center? Perhaps we dont have a wholehearted
commitment to a path or a teacher, suggests John Friend, founder of Anusara Yoga. When Ive had dry periods,
Ive found that Ive lost touch with my commitment to my teacher or my love for my path. When I rededicate
myself with passion, I feel rejuvenated and more motivated to stay connected. An oft-repeated Tibetan Buddhist
slogan echoes Friends remarks: Everything rides on the tip of your motivation. But motivation is not some
quality that can be cultivatedit comes from deep inside, from suering or desperation, from what the Tibetans
call bodhichitta (the heartfelt wish for the happiness of all beings), from trust in our teachers, and from a
profound desire to wake up and be free. Unless we keep asking ourselves, What are my priorities right now? we
tend to lapse back into old unconscious patterns.
We dont recognize being in the midst of doing. Many people mistake being for a familiar feeling or experience
theyve had in meditation or yoga practice (/practice/), such as peace, relaxation, or a pleasant current of energy.
Then they try to reconnect with being by recapturing the buzz. But feelings have an annoying habit of coming
and going and resisting our attempts to control or reproduce them. Being is much more immediate than thatits
the pause between thoughts, the space in which everything comes and goes, the stillness underlying all activity,

the awareness thats looking out through our eyes right now. Immediate though it may be, it nevertheless eludes
our eorts to make it happen or grasp it conceptuallyand its so subtle and empty of content that the mind
may overlook it. If we open to our experience just the way it is, however, we can attune to being. Paradoxically,
this simple attunement often, though not always, gives rise to the very experiences we were trying to reproduce in
the rst place.
Were addictedto speed, achievement, consumption, the adrenaline rush of stress, and, most insidiously
of all, to our minds. At the heart of our resistance to beingindeed, at the heart of our speed and our stressis
the incessantly chattering monkey mind, which is obsessed with past and future, loss and gain, pleasure and
pain. The mind is terried of the present moment, which is where being inevitably occurs. In fact, its the mind that
gives doing a bad rap, because the attachment and struggle it generates makes many forms of doing so
unpleasant. This compulsive mind constructs a separate sense of self, often called the ego, thats trapped in a
world of psychological time, surrounded by other separate selves that threaten its survival. It then invents the
spiritual search and other self-improvement schemes as an attempt to escape the trap it has created for itself.
The only way to kick this addiction to the mind and its creations, advises Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A
Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (http://www.amazon.com/Power-Now-Guide-SpiritualEnlightenment/dp/1577311523), is to awaken to our identity with something much vasterbeing itself, our
essential nature.

Portals to Being
From the highest spiritual perspective, we can never lose our connection with being. In fact, the separation
between being and doing is just another fabrication of the mind. No matter how still we try to become, doing is
always happening: The heart is beating, the lungs are breathing, the internal organs are functioning, the eyes are
blinking. In the words of the Bhagavad Gita, Not even for a moment can anyone remain without performing
actions. Everyone is unwittingly made to act by the primary qualities born of nature. In the end, any attempt to
be, whatever that might mean, is just another form of doing.
So the question is not, Are we doing or being? But rather, How do we relate to our actions? Do we identify
ourselves as the doer, the separate individual who struggles to achieve and survive, or do we remain unattached
to the fruits of our actions, as the Gita and other sacred texts recommend, and identify as the observer or witness
of life as it unfolds?
You can learn to be and do at the same time, notes Rodney Yee, coauthor of Yoga: The Poetry of the Body
(http://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Poetry-Body-Rodney-Yee/dp/0312273312) and director of the Piedmont Yoga
Studio in Oakland, California. If youre owing down a river, youre just being, yet youre moving downstream. The
present moment is like that. If you concentrate your attention in the moment, youre totally present, yet its not
stagnant or xed. The stillness is the state of mind that observes the movement.
However, until we experience this stillnesswhich is actually not an experience or mind-state, but the deeper
stillness of being that underlies and pervades all experiencewe cant realize the union of doing and being that
the great spiritual texts describe. Where do we discover this stillness? In the timeless moment, the eternal Now,
free of the conceptual overlays of past and future. As the scriptures remind us, time is merely a creation of the
mind, and only the Now exists. When we awaken to our identity with this timeless dimension, the problem with
nding a balance between doing and being drops away as the separate self-sense dissolves, and all thats left is
simply life living itself.
This may sound like a lofty, unattainable state. However, both meditation and hatha yoga, if practiced without
eort or struggle, can be living portals to the Now. asana practice is the continual renement of staying present
with the mind so time stops, says Yee. When youre just being, you lose the aspect of time, but you dont lose
movement. When the mind stays steady on the moment, there is no time.

In Zen, the corresponding approach to meditation is called just sitting. Theres no attempt to achieve some
particular state of mind, not even satori, but merely a steady presence in the Now. Of course, this practice neednt
be conned to the cushion: In everyday life it takes the form of just walking, just eating, just driving. In other
words, total absorption in every activity without separation.
Ultimately, the attempt to nd balance becomes irrelevant when we recognize that reality is by its nature a
seamless, indivisible union of the twothe dance of Shiva and Shakti, the meeting point of consciousness and its
manifestations, the absolute and the relative, the timeless and the time-bound. For me, being and doing are
complementary and come out of the same spirit, the same universal presence, says Friend. At the ultimate level
consciousness is spacious, vast, luminous, completely free. Out of this ground of being everything arises: material
reality, thought, emotion, activity.
Even though we may appear to lose our equilibrium again and again, our search comes to an end when we
awaken to a deeper dimension. This is the supreme view taught by the great masters and sages of every spiritual
tradition. The reason everything looks beautiful is it is out of balance, but its background is always in perfect
harmony, observes Zen master Shunryu Suzuki in his classic book of talks, Zen Mind, Beginners Mind
(http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Mind-Beginners-Shunryu-Suzuki/dp/1590308492). This is how everything exists in
the realm of Buddha nature, losing its balance against a background of perfect balance.

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