Action and Activity

 

 

Remember two words: one is "action," another is "activity." Action is not activity; activity is not action. Their natures are diametrically opposite. Action is when the situation demands it, you act, you respond. Activity is when the situation doesn't matter, it is not a response; you are so restless within that the situation is just an excuse to be active.

 

Action comes out of a silent mind -- it is the most beautiful thing in the world. Activity comes out of a restless mind -- it is the ugliest. Action is when it has a relevance; activity is irrelevant. Action is moment to moment, spontaneous; activity is loaded with the past. It is not a response to the present moment, rather, it is pouring your restlessness, which you have been carrying from the past, into the present. Action is creative. Activity is very very destructive -- it destroys you, it destroys others.

 

Try to see the delicate distinction. For example, you are hungry then you eat -- this is action. But you are not hungry, you don't feel any hunger at all, and still you go on eating -- this is activity. This eating is like a violence: you destroy food, you crush your teeth and destroy food; it gives you a little release of your inner restlessness. You are eating not because of hunger, you are simply eating because of an inner need, an urge to be violent. [....]

 

You cannot remain yourself, you cannot remain silent, you cannot remain inactive. Through activity you go on throwing your madness, insanity. Action is beautiful, action comes as a spontaneous response; life needs response. Every moment you have to act, but the activity comes through the present moment. You are hungry and you seek food. You are thirsty and you go to the well. You are feeling sleepy and you go to sleep. It is out of the total situation that you act. Action is spontaneous and total.

 

Activity is never spontaneous, it comes from the past. You may have been accumulating it for many years, and then it explodes into the present -- it is not relevant. But mind is cunning; the mind will always find rationalizations for the activity. The mind will always try to prove that this is not activity, this is action; it was needed. Suddenly you flare up in anger. Everybody else becomes aware that it was not needed, the situation never demanded it, it was simply irrelevant -- only you cannot see. Everybody feels: "What are you doing? There was no need for it. Why are you so angry?" But you will find rationalizations; you will rationalize that it was needed.

 

These rationalizations help you to remain unconscious about your madness. These are the things that Gurdjieff used to call "buffers." You create buffers of rationalization around you so you don't come to realize what is the situation. Buffers are used in trains; between two bogies, two compartments, buffers are used so that if there is a sudden stopping there will not be too much shock to the passengers -- the buffers will absorb the shock. Your activity is continuously irrelevant, but the buffers of rationalizations don't allow you to see the situation. Buffers blind you -- and this type of activity continues.

 

If this activity is there, you cannot relax. How can you relax? -- because it is an obsessive need, you want to do something, whatsoever it is. [....]

 

Activity is when the action has no relevance. Watch in yourself and see: ninety percent of your energy is wasted in activity. And because of this, when the moment for action comes, you don't have any energy. A relaxed person is simply non-obsessive, and the energy starts accumulating within him. He conserves his energy, it is conserved automatically, and then when the moment for action comes his total being flows into it. That's why action is total. Activity is always half-hearted, because how can you befool yourself absolutely? Even YOU know that it is useless. Even you are aware that you are doing it for certain feverish reasons within, which are not even clear to you, very vague.

 

You can change activities, but unless activities are transformed into actions, that won't help. People come to me and they say, "I would like to stop smoking." I say, "Why? This is such a beautiful TM, continue. And if you stop it you will start something else -- because the disease doesn't change by changing the symptoms. Then you will chew pan, then you will chew gum; and there are even more dangerous things. These are innocent, because if you are chewing gum you are chewing gum yourself. You may be a fool, but you are not a violent man; you are not destructive to anybody else. If you stop chewing gum, smoking, then what will you do? Your mouth needs activity, it is violent. Then you will talk, then you will talk continuously; yakety-yakety-yak -- and that is more dangerous!" [....]

 

Activity is your escape from yourself. In action you are; in activity you have escaped from yourself -- it is a drug. In activity you forget yourself, and when you forget yourself there are no worries, no anguish, no anxiety. That's why you need to be continuously active, doing something or other, but never in a state when non-doing flowers in you and blooms.

 

Action is good. Activity is ill. Find the distinction within yourself: what is activity and what is action; that is the first step. The second step is to be more involved in action so that the energy moves into action; and whenever there is activity to be more watchful about it, more alert. If you are aware, activity ceases, energy is preserved, and the same energy becomes action.

 

Action is immediate. It is nothing ready-made, it is not prefabricated. It doesn't give you any chance to make a preparation, to go through a rehearsal. Action is always new and fresh like the dew-drops in the morning. And a person who is a person of action is also always fresh and young. The body may become old, but his freshness continues. The body may die, but his youth continues. The body may disappear, but he remains -- because God loves freshness. God is always for the new and the fresh.

 

Drop more and more activity. But how can you drop it? You can make dropping itself an obsession. This is what has happened to your monks in the monasteries: dropping activity has become their obsession. They are continuously doing something to drop it: prayer, meditation, yoga, this and that -- now that is also activity. You cannot drop it in that way; it will come from the back door.

 

Be aware. Feel the difference between action and activity. And when activity takes hold of you -- in fact that should be called a possession: when the activity possesses you, like a ghost; and activity is a ghost, it comes from the past, it is dead -- when activity possesses you and you become feverish, then become more aware; that's all that you can do. Watch it. Even if you have to do it, do it with full awareness. Smoke, but smoke very slowly, with full awareness so that you can see what you are doing.

 

If you can watch smoking, suddenly some day, the cigarette will fall from your fingers, because the whole absurdity of it will be revealed to you. It is stupid; it is simply stupid, idiotic! When you realize that, it simply falls. You cannot throw it because throwing is an activity. That's why I say it simply falls, just like a dead leaf from the tree ... falling, just like that it falls. If YOU have thrown it, you will pick it up again in some other way, in some other form.

 

Let things drop, don't drop them. Let activity disappear, don't force it to disappear -- because the very effort to force it to disappear is again activity in another form. Watch, be alert, conscious, and you will come to a very very miraculous phenomenon: when something drops by itself, on its own accord, it leaves no trace on you. If you force it, then a trace is left, then a scar is left. Then you will always brag that you smoked for thirty years, and then YOU dropped it. Now this bragging is the same; talking about it you are doing the same thing -- not smoking, but talking too much about that you have dropped smoking. Your lips are again in activity, your mouth is functioning, your violence is there.

 

If a man really understands, things drop -- and then you cannot take the credit that "I have dropped it." It dropped itself! You have not dropped it. The ego is not strengthened through it. And then more and more actions will become possible. And whenever you have an opportunity to act totally, don't miss it, don't waver -- act.

 

Act more, and let activities drop on their own accord. A transformation will come to you by and by. It takes time, it needs seasoning, but there is no hurry also. [....]

 

-Osho, "Tantra: The Supreme Understanding, #4"