"There is no question of any bold action. In fact, there is no question of any action at all.

"My whole teaching is how to be effortless. Even when you are doing something, you should not be the doer. Even when there is action, it should be almost non-action. It should come as a spontaneous flowering, not out of willpower.

"But these are the diseases given to every human being by the whole past. Willpower has been taught to everybody as a great value. Every child is told to have willpower. And willpower is something against your spontaneity – then you cannot be at ease, restful. Do you think flowers have to do much to blossom? Are trees taking bold action to grow? There is no action at all.

"Lao Tzu used to say, 'Look at the trees, look at the rivers, look at the stars, and you will understand 'actionless action.''

"Certainly the river is flowing towards the ocean but you cannot call it action because there is no will forcing it to go towards the ocean. It is very easy-going – no hurry, no haste, not even the longing that it should reach, no competition with other rivers that perhaps they may reach ahead of it. It is simply going, singing and dancing its dance through the mountains, through the valleys, through the plains, not worried whether it reaches to the goal or not. Every moment is so beautiful and precious that, who cares about the tomorrow?

"Willpower has been used to create a false personality in you. Willpower is another beautiful name for the ugly entity called ego.

"One of the great psychologists of this century, Alfred Adler, based his whole psychological analysis on this simple fact – that all man's problems arise out of will to power. He wants to become somebody, somebody special, somebody higher than others, somebody holier than others. It does not matter whether he is in the marketplace or in the monastery; the struggle is to be on the top.

"The more you fight and the more you succeed, the farther away you are from your own being, because you become more and more tense, more and more worried."