Right Action (a Postcard from Ulysses to Telemachus)
What you want, Telemachus, is for all your actions to look like luck, not effort or even skill. Just luck, grace, spontaneity, laughter. I watched a god do battle with a great demon, and it looked like play, like a joke, like random joy. What you want is for your every action to look and feel as if it had been done by one of the gods. People watching should say, “He didn’t do that. Surely some god came and helped him.” And you also think, “How did I do that? I must not have done that. I must have let some god help me.” (1)
NOTES:
1. Compare these words from the Gita:
“The man who has seen the truth
thinks, ‘I am not the doer’
at all times–when he sees, hears, touches,
when he smells, eats, walks, sleeps, breathes.”