Being and Doing

( From “ The Art of Living” by Thich Nhat Hanh pages 99 – 101)

My name, Nhat Hanh, means ‘ one action’.  I spent a long time trying to find out which action this was.  Then I discovered that my one action is to be peace and to bring peace to others.

We have a tendency to think in terms of doing and not in terms of being.  We think that when we’re not doing anything,  we’re wasting our time.  But that’s not true.  Our time is first of all for us to be.  To be what?  To be alive, to be peaceful, to be joyful, to be loving.  And this is what the world needs most.  We all need to train ourselves in our way of being, and that is the ground for all action.

Our quality of being determines our quality of doing.

There are those who say, “ Don’t just sit there – do something!”  When we see injustice, violence, and suffering all around us, we naturally want to do something to help.  As a young monk in Vietnam in the 1950’s and ’60’s, together with my friends and students, we did everything we could to create a grassroots Buddhism that could respond to the enormous challenges and suffering of the times.  We knew that offering chants and prayers was not enough to save the country from the desperate situation of conflict, division, and war.

We began publishing a large national weekly Buddhist magazine, started thee School of Youth for Social Service to bring  relief and support to the villages devastated by the war, and also founded Van Hannah University in Saigon to offer a more modern approach to education for the young generation.  In all this work, we learned that the quality of  our action depended on the quality of our being.  So every week we organised a whole day of mindfulness practice at the nearby Bamboo Forest Monastery.  There we practiced sitting meditation, walking meditation, and mindful walking together, and we took time to listen deeply to one another’s challenges and joys.  With the energy of brotherhood and sisterhood, we created a wonderful, happy place of refuge.

So as well as saying “ Don’t just sit there – do something!” we can also say, “ Don’t just do something – sit there!”  Stopping, being still, and practicing mindfulness can bring about a whole new dimension of being.  We can transform our anger and anxiety, and cultivate our energy of peace, understanding, and compassion as the basis for action.  The energies of wisdom, compassion, inclusiveness, fearlessness, patience, and non-discrimination – never disparaging anyone- are all qualities of  awakened beings.  Cultivating these energies helps us bring the ultimate dimension into the historical dimension, so we can live a life of action in a relaxed and joyful way, free from fear, stress and despair.  We can still be very active but do everything from a place of peace and joy.  This is the kind of action that is most needed.  When we can do this, the work we do will be of great help to ourselves and the world.