The Buddha seemed to have led an active life, traveling, meetings, teachings, etc.
Is this inconsistent with the Buddhist idea of letting go of busyness and activity?
No, I mean, I don't know that there is a Buddhist idea of letting go of business and activity.
Buddhism is the letting go of clinging, letting go of suffering.
So if you...
need or want to teach, travel, meet, etc., then this is going to be a cause for suffering for you.
But not because of the meeting, traveling and teaching, because of the wanting.
Because the wanting is going to cause you to create stress in your own being and it's going to have you create sankharas, formations that you'll then have to deal with and the consequences and the repercussions.
you will build something.
So once you become a teacher, if you say, I want to be a teacher, and then you go and you teach, well, suddenly you've got students, and then you've got to deal with the students.
So if you want the good side, you'll have to have the bad side.
That's the problem.
But when you have let go of all this...
The active life is still there because you're still a living organism.
A tree doesn't stop growing just because it doesn't have a mind and grows naturally.
A human being travels and meets and talks and so on as a part of the developed habits.
And these still continue, going to the washroom, eating food.
And if there's the opportunity to teach, for example in the Buddha's case where he was invited to teach, then one does it naturally.
But Buddhism is all about letting go of our attachment to these things.
And so not the doing themselves.
The Buddha, because he was so wonderful, was invited quite often to teach and was asked to go here and go there and was as a result quite busy, but without any desire to be busy.