These two words are very very meaningful: ”response” and ”reaction.” Response is alive to the
situation; reaction is just an engrained habit. Because in the past you have been training yourself to help somebody if he has fallen, you simply go and help, but there is no heart in it. Somebody is drowning in the river: you run and help the person just because you have been taught to do so. You have cultivated the habit of helping, but you are not involved. You remain out of it, your heart is not there – you have not responded. You have not responded to this man, to this man drowning in this river; you have not responded to this moment, you have followed an ideology.
To follow an ideology is good: help everybody, become a servant to people, have compassion! –you have an ideology, and through the ideology you react. It is out of the past that the action comes, it is already dead. When the situation creates the action and you respond with full awareness, only then something of beauty happens to you.
If you react because of the ideology, old habit patterns, you will not gain anything out of it. At the most you can gain a little ego, which is not a gain at all. You may start bragging that you have saved a man who was drowning in the river. You may go to the market-place and shout loudly, ”Look, I have saved another human life!” You may gain a little more ego, you have done something good, but it is not a gain. You have lost a great opportunity of being spontaneous, of being spontaneous in compassion.
If you had responded to the situation, then something would have flowered in you, a blossoming; you would have felt a certain silence, a stillness, a blessing. Whenever there is a response you feel a blossoming inside. Whenever there is a reaction you remain dead: corpselike you behave, robotlike you act. Reaction is ugly, response is beautiful. Reaction is always of the part, reaction is never of he whole. Response is always of the whole; your whole totality jumps into the river. You don’t think about it, the situation simply lets it happen.
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