Activity or Inactivity – What should I do?

Arjuna asked Sri Krishna – “O Janardana, O Kesava, why do you urge me to engage in this ghastly warfare, if you think that intelligence is better than furtive work?” – Why should I engage in fighting with the people I I grew up up with? Why should I fight the teacher, who taught me the art of war? Why should I kill the cousins that I played with? Why should I kill so many innocents who have nothing to do with me or Duryodhana? Why should I fight with my elders, who always taught me the way to lead my life?”

I ask the same question – When Shiva closes his eyes to the Maya and realizes that the Maya is the cause of grief, why should we go on the path of Maya?

Sri Krishna answered Arjuna – “Partha, the prakriti or the nature is supposed to recreate itself. Its nature is to procreate and move on continuously. This is the way Brahma created the universe. This is the way I engage with the world.”

For the cycle of nature to keep moving, we all need to play our part and keep performing our actions. Our actions without the expectation of a return makes our deeds even nobler. Humans usually tend to follow a path shown by others. We all look upon others to choose our own activities. Only the ones who choose their own path, shine over others and are chosen as leaders. If the leaders themselves choose the path of inaction or “sanyas”, how would the cycle move?

Inactivity holds the nature’s cycle. Activity keeps it moving. Actions performed by a person are just the roles performed on the stage of the world. The real actor is beyond us. Another way to understand the same concept is the concept of the body and the soul. The body is destructible while the soul is not. The soul moves on to find another body as its house and continues to perform the actions.  

In our own interpretations of the god and the scriptures, we often mistake the God to have different forms and different acts. We often visualize the God to have taught us different paths. What we do not realize that the God himself took different forms to emphasize of different actions that are required to perform based on the situation.