10 Dec 2020
[Smt. Anita Renkuntla asked: I read in a discourse in which the Lord Himself said that one should find action in inaction and inaction in action, in some places. This was instructed by Lord Kṛṣṇa to Arjuna for the noble cause of establishing justice. How can this concept of inaction in action be correlated in human life? At Your Lotus feet.]
Swāmi replied: When an intention exists, even the inaction becomes action. Intention itself is a theoretical action. Even for the intention, there is punishment, here as well as in hell. If the intention does not exist, naturally, there should not be any action. But sometimes, action still has to be done by some force. Such an action can be treated as inaction. When there is the intention to kill somebody, there is theoretical punishment, which is that you will be warned severely here or in hell. Sometimes, one has the intention to kill somebody, the person makes others kill that somebody. In that case, the person is punished more severely than the actual person, who directly killed the victim. When you are walking on the road, some ants may be killed under your feet and in such sinful action there is no punishment since the intention to kill is absent. A ship sailing in the sea at a very long distance will appear to be standstill by a person seeing it from the seashore. Sometimes, when you are sitting in a stationary train, you feel that your train is moving while actually, the train next to your train is moving. Both these are practical examples for inaction in action and action in inaction.
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