Remaining Yourself, How Will You Change Your Actions? (The Actor Is the Action) || AP Neem Candies

Acharya Prashant: We do not just act; we act with the intention of obtaining the fruit of the action.

So, the actor is there, and the actor acts as per his own personal intellect, desires, calculations, and projections. He speculates, calculates that his action will get him a particular result. The result is, in his estimation, in his imagination, pretty lucrative. In fact, it is for the sake of that result that he acts. So far so good.

But then comes the disappointing part, and the disappointing part is: the results are never as anticipated—and never means never.

Here you would probably object. You would say, “But sometimes we do succeed in getting results of our choice!” No, I would still insist.

What is it that the actor is actually seeking in the result? The actor is seeking contentment, completion, a finality, a solution in the result. The actor doesn't merely act. The actor is a very frustrated entity; the actor acts for the sake of bringing an end to his frustration.

So, you must realize that whatsoever is the target result, the actual target is contentment. The action is for the sake of the result, and the result is for the sake of contentment.

Now, the whole equation can go wrong at two places. First is: you acted anticipating a particular result, and the result itself did not arrive. Since the result did not arrive, you are not content. Bad! The second probability is: you acted for the sake of a certain result, and the result was as per your wish, yet this fulfillment of the wish could not fulfill you. The wish was fulfilled, you were not. There was no contentment. The actor is left high and dry: high because he has obtained the desired result, dry because the desired result does not suffice.

So, if the first scenario in which the action failed to fetch the desired result was bad, then the second scenario where the action succeeds in fetching the desired result is worse.

Now, that is not a very attractive position to be in, a position in which you have to choose between bad and worse. Would you want to be in a position where these are the only two choices available? One choice is bad, the other choice is worse. But then, that is the situation of the actor. He has to pick one of these two. Very badly placed is he.

Now, what does Ramana Maharshi mean when he says, “Karma carries within itself the seed of its own destruction”?

The actor has invested a lot in the action. The actor is the action. As long as the actor believes in himself, he will have no choice but to act the way he does. The actor and the action are not separable, which means that the actor cannot really change his action without changing himself. Please understand.

The actor really has no choice with respect to the action as long as the actor remains who he is. The actor is the action.

Now, if the action and the subsequent flow of events are quite painful, then the actor thinks of quitting the action. Correct? The actor brings about the action, the action brings about the result, and the result fails in bringing about contentment, and all this has involved a lot of investment of time and energy and hope and commitment, right?

The actor sees this much. The actor says, “This entire train of events is no good. Sometimes things are bad, at other times they are just worse. This is no good.” So, what is it that he can change? The action. But he cannot change the action if he remains who he is—the actor is the action—so the actor is now badly stuck. If he remains who he is, then the only two choices are bad and worse, and if he wants to avoid the bad, then he cannot remain who he is. He has to go away, dissolve, give himself up. It is almost like death. Quite scary, the imagination part of it.

So, the actor, in spite of all the brickbats and frustrations and defeats he has received, still tries again. See, he is the actor. What else can he do? He is choiceless in a sense. As long as he remains who he is, he will be compelled to keep doing stupid things.

So, he embarks on another such stupid pursuit, which is to try again, modify the action a little, superficially, and hope that the results would be different this time. He puts in more hard work hoping that the results would be different. The results are not different.

You see, there was this lane. The lane ended in some kind of a huge hole that looked into the sewer. The actor used to walk down the lane and reach the end where there was nothing but rubbish and stink, and this used to disappoint him. He decides that things must change—with him remaining who he is with no change in himself. He decides to work hard. He meets some motivational gurus, and they tell him, “Work harder. You will succeed.”

So, now instead of walking down that lane, he starts running. He hopes that by running he will reach some other place. To his utter frustration, he discovers that he is only reaching the same stench faster and more frequently.

This method did not succeed, so he tries another clever method. He says, “I used to walk facing the dead end—now I will walk backward! You see, I have changed my approach 180 degrees, so the results should also change 180 degrees. Earlier I used to walk with my face towards the end of the lane—now I will walk backward! I will not look towards the huge store of rubbish. I will look in the opposite direction!”

So, he walks backward—and he is dismayed: he has still reached the same place. Not only the same place, this time he has reached the same place with a few bruises. Walking backward, he stumbled upon stones, hit against strangers, and got abused. All those things happened additionally to him.

Having tried all kinds of methods and cleverness, the actor realizes that he has to go. He is his own suffering. He does not have any suffering. He is the suffering. That is what Ramana Maharshi means here.

When Ramana Maharshi says, “Karma carries the seeds of its own destruction,” what he really means is, going one step deeper, “Karta (actor) carries the seeds of his own destruction.”

The actor, as he is constructed, is not sustainable. The actor, as he is conditioned, as he is modeled, as he is designed, is not stable. He has no longevity. At some point, he has to give in. At some point, he has to accept defeat and surrender.

So, karta carries within himself the seeds of his own destruction, and therefore karma carries within the seeds of its own destruction. What are the seeds of the destruction? The fact that your actions will never get you what you want from your actions. That is why your actions will have to meet an end, a destruction.

You act. The more you act, the more you will discover that your actions are really futile. Hence, the more you act, the closer you will come towards the destruction of the action. The more active, the more desirous, the more confident the actor is, the faster he is running towards his own end

Full article link: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/karma-carries-the-seed-of-its-own-destruction-1_37d3003

show_less