We don't need more activism. We need more awareness.
Awareness doesn't have to shout, protest, march in the street, or engage in violent confrontation. Awareness chooses the right word, spoken quietly at the right moment, to penetrate the darkness and open the heart.
Awareness acts so gently yet decisively that things seem to happen by themselves. Awareness inspires an innocent breath of change that sets off a chain reaction of creative acts. Hardly anyone notices the one who spoke that Word or breathed that Breath, but the world was turned in a new direction. The true "activist" acts without acting, through silent awareness, remaining in the field of the anonymous, whence creation arises.
This is the essential teaching of the greatest masters, whether of the East or the West. Laot'zu taught "wei wu wei": doing through non-doing. Far from being a passive approach, this teaching spawned the martial arts, which is highly effective action expending a minimum of effort.
In the Bhagavad Gita 4:18, Krishna says: "One who sees action in stillness and stillness in action, truly sees." And Jesus said, "Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these" (Luke 12:27).
Our nation is already hyper-active, hoarse with shouting, over-organized, and stressed out with angry protest. Yet all this exertion is leading us nowhere. Angry "movements" come and go, yet little seems to change. Why?
Because we have not learned to incorporate the field of Silence into the field of action. We have not learned to lay the foundation of daily activity with deep meditation.
Mahesh Yogi's favorite line from the Gita was, "Yoga-stah karu-karmani," which means, "Established in the field of Yoga, harmony and peace, perform action." Meditation is not an escape from action, but a preparation for more dynamic action: doing less to accomplish more.
Jai Guru Dev
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