Right away, drop everything. Let all systems power down. Coming into a state of rest. Ease.
These are the first words I heard during the meditation session. I mean, it seems like a straightforward instruction but after an 8 hour day at work, it was easier said than done.
He continued: We might just track for any vestiges in the body of our days activities so far. Not so interested in mental cognitive aspects to this just see if you can detect any traces of momentum in the body. Perhaps of a little rush or haste. If you're finding anything like that, give them a warm welcome, a sort of loving spacious embrace and congratulate yourself for having come into stillness. For giving yourself this time, devoted not to Doing but to Being.
Over the course of a few seconds, a huge mass of thought began to shift. A landslide consisting of tonnes of unrecognised truths, confused memories, and unidentified stresses steadily glided into a new position on the mountain of my mind. "Doing and Being," I thought. "That's it."
If an alien came to earth and followed me around with a little clipboard, hoping to understand my preferred behaviours, it wouldn't take long to come to some conclusions. They'd watch me hurriedly cook while listening to a podcast before I rushed off to work. They’d notice that any spare moment is filled with planning and revision. I even wind down for sleep with various activities—reading, writing, or stretching.
Imagine a seesaw with a praying mantis on one side and a baby hippo on the other—this is my imbalance between Being and Doing.
I don't think I'm unique either. I mean, I don't have a YouTube or a vaping addiction. I don't even drink coffee. Back when I did all three, my Doing was off the charts. I would race from task to task, always reading, watching, or listening to something. Even if you caught me sitting still and in silence, I wasn't simply Being. Oh no. Upstairs, in the ol' noodle, there was a raucous carnival of thought going on.
After an 8-hour workday of contractually obligated Doing, most of us are part-human and part-brain-dead-consumpto-zombie, hungry to turn to the pleasure industries for comfort and distraction. Add to that all the Doing that makes up preparation for work and the dreaded commute, and the closest we get to Being is lying in bed asleep—and we're not even conscious during.
All this Doing isn’t good for us. Burnout, anxiety, depression, existential dread, the feeling of being stuck on a hamster wheel, addiction, and constant distraction can all result from a life that is too full of Doing. Personally, when I finish a big to-do list before a shift at work, I feel poorly. If I spend the whole day Doing, when it comes time to rest or just Be—whether that’s winding down for bed, waiting for the vegetables to finish in the oven, or walking along a quiet beach—I just can’t switch off. My mind races.
I want to be able to appreciate a job well done without thinking about more to do. I want to take a walk on the beach without incessantly planning what I'm going to attend to afterwards. I want to just wait for things instead of instinctively reaching for my phone. Maybe I'm good enough at Doing. Maybe I should be better at Being.
Being and Doing
The hippie and the yuppie could both be guilty.
Unless we're hot on the trail of enlightenment or significant material wealth, both Being and Doing require our attention. Without Doing there is no food in the fridge and no job to pay for it. Doing is what sures up our lives against the forces of entropy. We simply must keep washing dishes and getting haircuts.
On the other hand, Doing leans into the future at the expense of the present. It's ambitious. It wants to get where it's going. Doing's goal is to arrive, to be done, completed, finished. Doing doesn't enjoy process as much as it enjoys outcomes. For Doing, the best fridge is stocked, the best work is finished, and the nicest carpet has already been cleaned. There is no time for the present; Doing is aimed straight at the future.
Being rests more easily in the present. It's able to set aside the past and the future, analysis and regret, planning and expectation. Instead, Being simply receives the present as it is. When we really listen, taste, smell, feel, or look—when we pay attention to experience—we're Being, much more than we're Doing.
John Keats, the English poet, coined the term negative capability, which is a kind of capacity in us for receptivity. Rather than putting out, we can sit back and simply take in and receive our experience. Keats described it as "being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."
Being is thus more calm and content. It isn't trying to get anywhere. Being is tied up with acceptance, gratitude, and simplicity.
The Radical Tradesman
While the hippie and the yuppie are both guilty, our society clearly privileges the Doing rather than the Being.
At Dhamma Rasmi, on a beautiful winter day, the kangaroos lay in the late morning sun. After 9 days of near total quiet, the two hundred participants of the Vipassana retreat were told that Noble Silence had been lifted. It was over tea on this tenth day that I met Andrew.
Andrew is an electrician, about 60 years old. Andrew was small (and presumably still is). He had a few days worth of stubble and the kind of gentle, squinty eyes that exceptionally kind men often have. Andrew spoke softly and was quick to laugh, especially as we spoke about serious topics like the capitalist machine, the failings of educational institutions, and, naturally, meditation.
Andrew asked me if there was anything more subversive than a Vipassana course. I looked to my left and right. Didn't seem too radical to me. It was day 10, and I hadn't heard any political theories or met any anarchists. Really, it was a few hundred people learning to meditate in silence. One guy I spoke to earlier worked in the mines. Another used to be a professional football player. The puzzlement must have shown on my face. Andrew went on.
Vipassana courses have no advertisements and no marketing, he told me. They're a set of organisations that extend around the globe from Mongolia to Mali, Lithuania to Lima, with no hierarchy or paid positions. Everyone who attends a Vipassana course does so completely for free. Everyone who helps to run them, whether they're managing the finances of the site, gardening, cooking, cleaning, checking participants in, or teaching the practice itself, they all are volunteers. Funding is acquired by donation only and only from individuals—never organisations or corporations—who have already sat a 10-day retreat.
I was beginning to understand what Andrew was getting at.
Retreats are silent. Participants don't talk except occasionally to the assistant teacher or course manager for 9 consecutive days. How do students fill those days? By meditating for 10 and a half hours each day. There's also some walking, two meals a day, and water. No coffee. No nicotine. No screens. No reading. No writing. No running. No yoga. Just sit, stand, walk, or lie down. It was anti-capital, anti-consumption, anti-working, and anti-Doing. Where else can you find that?
Stoic Self-Sufficiency
“Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.”
Seneca
“Don’t seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will—then your life will flow well.”
Epictetus
For the Stoics, a ragtag bunch of Greek and Roman philosophers who lived from around 300 BCE through til 300 CE, virtue was their north star. While others may have chased esteem, wealth, power, success, love, honour, or happiness, this was not the way of Marcus Aurelius, Cicero, or Epictetus. Every situation was a chance to cultivate virtue.
Virtue was divided into four: wisdom, courage, temperance (or moderation), and justice. Under these four virtues lies another. It is foundational to them all and without which none can flourish. Self-sufficiency.
Self-sufficiency isn't to be interpreted agriculturally or economically so much as psychologically. We don’t need to make everything we wear or walk everywhere we travel. Rather, it means not relying on others for well-being, self-worth, and meaning. "Self-sufficiency is about recognising that life is a single-player game. The only person you can change is you."1 We should focus our efforts accordingly.
Marcus Aurelius said that it isn't external things that are the problem. It's our assessment of them. If we want to be happy, we should want for the things we have rather than chase those we do not. Independence and self-sufficiency, then, mean cultivating peace of mind regardless of outcomes. If our plane arrives on time, great. If it doesn't, no bother. Simply figure out a workaround. Figure out how to use this time in a way that you'll be thankful for. Come up with a game to play to lift the spirits of your travel companions. Work with what is in your control; don't curse that which lies outside it.
The Stoic value of self-sufficiency is at home in the meditative practice of Vipassana. Vipassana attempts to cultivate equanimity in the face of positive or negative sensation. If we feel pain, we should not recoil. If we allow ourselves to be averse to certain sensations, we become slaves to something outside our control.
If we experience pleasure, we shouldn't run towards it, rubbing our hands together either. If we do, we'll inevitably suffer when our nice sensations disappear. Desire and attachment in a changing world must lead to loss and suffering.
In both Stoicism and Vipassana, the contentedness of Being is crucial. We should not hold our happiness hostage to the opinion of others or the presence of certain sensations or experiences. Life doesn't start after the Doing is done—at the end of a to-do list or on a Friday afternoon. Life is happening right now, to all of us, and the future, elusive as it is, never actually arrives.
We can, with practice, gain the wisdom required to accept the present moment as it is, not just when things are going well but also when life disappoints us. Does a wise person let their well-being get tied up in whether a milkshake is up to scratch? Do they fume for hours when their plane is late? Wise people have learnt to surrender their Doing. They've learnt the freedom of Being.
Happiness, Hedonism and The Stories of Our Lives
The emotional state theory of happiness was developed by Daniel Haybron as an alternative to the hedonistic account. According to hedonists, happiness all boils down to pleasantness and unpleasantness. A happy life, then, is simply a life filled with more pleasant experience than unpleasant experience. Job done.
Haybron, a philosopher at St. Louis University in Missouri, wasn't a big fan of this. Nor was he a fan of the life satisfaction theory, another main contender in the philosophical canon. Life satisfaction theories of happiness state that happiness is a sort of favourable attitude towards one's life in its entirety. How we feel when we look back, our deathbed macro-judgements—that is what makes a happy life.
Haybron instead proposed an alternative. It isn't simply about time spent cheerful vs. time spent glum or how we narrativise our life looking back. Rather, happiness to Haybron consists of a broadly positive balance of emotions, moods, and something he called mood propensities.
Consider a highly stressed lawyer or doctor, undergoing some tests. They may report being in a positive mood during testing and may report afterwards that it was a positive experience for them, one that they're happy to have undergone. However, during the test, they may respond strongly to frustrating tasks or other negative mood inductions.
Our dispositions to experience certain moods rather than others—these are our mood propensities.
If we want to be more happy, we should increase our tendency to react happily to the world. For me, it is useful to imagine the happiest people I know and how they'd react to an experience. When a setback arises, they're the first to downplay its effects, conjure up a workaround, and look for silver linings. When things are going well, happy people react by bringing forth their full attention, not letting the good things in life pass by unnoticed. They're vocal with gratitude and thanks, appreciation, and presence.
Inversely, unhappy people usually react unhappily. When setbacks arise, the problem is unsolvable and a day-ruiner. Complaints spring forth easily and are often repeated. The world is not a nice place for unhappy people. It is filled with folks who have strange traffic-related vendettas and is perfectly designed to rain on their parades.
When things are good for unhappy people, they could always be better. Memory and imagination serve as tools for comparison—the notorious thief of joy. If only they were back in Spain, where the paella was just so good! If only there were no ad breaks or bits of ice cream cone that get stuck in their teeth!
Seneca said that “no person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.” Indeed, the happy person in the emotional state theory does just that; cheerfully works with what they have. "Curb your desire," wrote Epictetus in a fantastic summation of the teachings of Vipassana, "don't set your heart on so many things and you will get what you need."
Our world pulls us towards Doing. Our jobs, our phones, advertisements, self-help, and social media all suck us into an attitude of comparison, accomplishment, movement, and completion. "There is so much Everything" wrote Wislawa Szymborska, "that Nothing is hidden quite nicely." Indeed, Nothing is not prized by our society. Stillness instead of movement, silence instead of chattering, emptiness instead of fullness—in our world, to advocate for Nothing—for Being, instead of Doing—verges on a kind of madness.
Yes, we must go along with all the Doing, but only to a degree. We all need to make our dinners and hold onto our jobs. However, we must remember that the happy person knows how to turn it off. A stoic can power down. A Vipassana meditator can unhook from the endless demands of Doing. We too can learn to settle into the contentedness of Being.
We can practice gratitude in a nightly journal. We can increase our presence through meditation practices. We can calm down, slow down, and pay more attention. We can curb our desire. We can want for what we already have and cheerfully put it to use.
It's safe to say that we're all good enough at Doing. Just as Andrew pointed out, it is much more radical to excel, instead, at Being. On top of that, we'll actually get to be here, be present enough to enjoy our existence—this mysterious bright pearl that we've been handed from above. If that’s not good, I don’t know what is.
W.
https://dailystoic.com/self-sufficiency-the-ultimate-stoic-virtue/