Sometimes, the Right Action Looks Like Inaction
Questioner: I was gonna ask you about the chapters, you know you have many chapters that are very thought-provoking. One of them is, ‘Sometimes the right action appears like inaction.’ Though that’s one chapter. I want you to expand on this. When I was reading this chapter and I was thinking about that title and I thought of some practical situations in life and it made me think about something. So, tell me why do you say that, sometimes the right action appears like inaction?
Acharya Prashant: You see, when we do not appreciate the point our action is coming from, then there are two kinds of problems. One is, we do not act consciously and powerfully. When action is really needed, we find ourselves handicapped, almost paralyzed. We do not know where the energy and the clarity and the fearlessness must come from to act rightly, that is one problem. I suppose the bigger problem is that, we start acting needlessly, when there is no need to act. Both these problems go together hand in hand. Of these, the second one is probably more lethal today. If we look at the state of mankind today, what is happening is that probably more than 80-90% of the things that we are doing, are really not needed to be done. We are acting out of needless desperation and greed.
So, that chapter says that; as you quoted, that sometimes, the right action looks like inaction. If you are acting rightly, you might look like as the one not acting in a group of people who are acting very furiously and feverishly but a person energetically throwing about his limbs in this direction and that direction, running from pillar to post and then burning a lot of fuel of his life, is no guarantee of any meaningful action taking place at all. We need to slow down. We need to be extremely sure that the things that we are doing really needs to be done and when we first of all cutout from our life, that which is needless, then parallelly, we will also get the courage and the energy to energetically do what deserves and needs to be done.
Questioner: Totally, I agree. And how does one discern that? Of course, it comes, you can have a Guru, you can have a teacher, you can have a Master, It comes from past experience, it comes in the right bhakti, if I may say you know, it comes from the environment but is there a playbook to figuring out ‘how do you take the right action?’
That’s where wisdom comes, that’s where the power of, you know, the power of making a right choice but as you say in the books sometimes it can be, you know, seen as inaction.
Acharya Prashant: You see, there are two things and both of these are concurrently important. They act in combination with each other, they complement each other. One is a keen and honest observation of life, one has to be very honest towards oneself because often we are masters in self-delusion. We do not admit; first of all, to ourselves what our real intentions and fears and desires are. So, that is something that we need to work upon and secondly, we need the good company or rather great company of the scriptures.
So, the scriptures will tell us something and then we have to see whether it is corroborated by our life and when something arises in our life, if we find them echoing the scriptures then that reaffirms our belief in our finding and so, if these two act in tandem, then it becomes far easier to know oneself, which essentially means knowing the ego. I like to call these as the two wings of a bird when they work together, then there is a certain ascension in life.
