Action and Inaction

Aum Sairam

In many ways inaction is preferable to unintelligent action, for it has at least the merit of not creating further samskaras and complications. Even good and righteous action creates samskaras and means one more addition to the complications created by past actions and experiences. All life is an effort, a desperate struggle to undo what has been done in ignorance, to throw away the accumulated burden of the past, to find rescue from the debris left by a series of temporary achievements and failures. Life seeks to unwind the limiting samskaras of the past and to obtain release, so that its further creations may spring directly from the heart of eternity and bear the stamp of unhampered freedom.

Action that helps in attaining God is truly intelligent and spiritually fruitful because it brings release from bondage. It is second only to that action that springs spontaneously from the state of God-realization itself. All other forms of action, however, good or bad, effective or ineffective from a worldly point of view, contribute towards bondage and are inferior to inaction. Inaction is less helpful than intelligent action; but it is better than unintelligent action.

Allah Malik