Right action

For some time now, I have been seized with restlessness and my mind keeps buzzing, “I must do something”. With my life. As if living was not sufficient, but there had to be some activity that proved I was alive and that life was worthwhile. I cast my mind about a lot looking for something to do and mind you, there are a lot of worthwhile things to do. Uplift the poor, save the downtrodden, save the planet, start an enterprise, start a new hobby, change jobs, change cities ..... the list is as long as the list of human activities, but somehow I was not able to zoom in to anything and this restlessness was bothering me too much.

So today I decided to get to the root of it. I observed it for a while, for a long, long while. And realised it was rising entirely in the mind. My thoughts were getting churned up by watching other people involved in social service or taking time out and performing commendable works and I had somehow compared myself to them and found my self wanting. This thought process was unconscious, but that was how the mind had worked.

So, I asked myself, is that what I really want to do. Activity for the sake of it, or activity that imitates others’ activity. With such dubious motivations any activity is bound to end in failure. Either it gets badly done, or started and never finished. I realised that the motivation has to be deeper than that, and has to come from a place that is beyond the mind, has to come from the source itself. It should be ‘I want to do this’ and arising out of clarity of purpose, not ‘I must do this’ for the sake of doing it / everyone is doing it / society tells us to do it / it has been done for centuries etc.

This motivation from the source, with clarity and intentness of purpose, I realised, will always result in right action, not the haphazard action that comes from the restless mind prompting one that ‘I must do something’. When love motivates one to do something, then there is no restlessness, no urgency, action just flows effortlessly. For then it is life giving unto life.