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 and 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 a restless mind -- it is the ugliest. Action is when it has
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 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 a kind of violence:
you destroy
food, you crush your teeth together 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.
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 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 Georges I. 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 in trains, between 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.
The 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. There are fools all
over the world who go on saying, "Do something rather than nothing". And there
are perfect fools who have created a proverb all over the world, "An empty mind
is a devil's workshop". It is not! An empty mind is God's workshop. An empty mind
is the most beautiful thing in the world, the purest. How can an empty mind be a
workshop for the devil? The devil cannot enter into an empty mind, impossible!
The devil can enter only into a mind which is obsessed with activity -- then the
devil can take charge of you, he can show you ways and means and methods to be
more active. The devil never says, "Relax!" He says, "Why are you wasting your time?
Do something, man -- move! Life is passing you by, do something!" And all the great
teachers, teachers who have awakened to the truth of life, have come to realize
that an empty mind gives space to the divine to enter in you.