When you act out of nothingness, you respond; it is no longer a reaction. It has truth, it has validity in it, authenticity. It is existential. It is immediate, spontaneous, simple, innocent. And this action does not create any karma.

 

Remember, the word karma means action, a particular action. Not all actions create karma, remember. Buddha lived after his enlightenment for forty-two years. He was not sitting all the time under the bodhi tree doing nothing. He did a thousand and one things, but karma was not created. He acted! -- but it was no longer reaction, it was response.

 

If you respond out of nothingness it leaves no residue, it leaves no traces on you, karma is not created. You remain free. You go on acting and you remain free. It is as if a bird flies into the sky, leaves no traces, no footprints. The man who lives in the sky of nothingness leaves no footprints, leaves no karma, no residue. His act is total. And when the act is total, it is finished, it is complete. And a complete act does not hang around you like a cloud; only incomplete acts hang around you.

 

Somebody insulted you -- you wanted to hit him but you didn't. You saved your sainthood, you smiled and blessed the man and went home. Now it is going to be difficult: now the whole night you will dream that you are hitting the man. You may even kill him in your dreams. For years it will hang around you; it is incomplete. Anything incomplete is dangerous. When you are phony everything becomes incomplete. You love a woman but not enough to make it complete. Even while making love you are not entirely there; maybe you are still rehearsing. Maybe you have been reading sex manuals which are available. Maybe you have been reading Vatsyayana's Kama Sutra, or Masters and Johnson or the Kinsey Report, and you have been learning how to make love. And you are ready, knowledgeable! Now this woman is just an opportunity to practice your knowledge. So you are practicing your knowledge, but it is going to be incomplete because you are not in it. And then it is unsatisfying, then you feel frustrated -- and the cause is your knowledge.

 

Love is not something to be practiced. Life need not be practiced; life has to be lived, in utter innocence. Life is not a drama -- you need not prepare, you need not go into a rehearsal for it. Let it come as it comes, and be spontaneous.

 

But how can you be spontaneous if the ego is there? Ego is a great actor, ego is a great politician; ego goes on manipulating you. The ego says, "If you really want to act in a polished way preparation is needed. If you really want to act in a cultured way you have to rehearse it." The ego is a performer, and because of this performer you go on missing the joy, the celebration, the blessing of life.

 

Buddha says: When action comes out of nothing it creates no karma. Then it is so total that its very totality... and the circle is complete and finished. You never look backwards. Why do you go on looking backwards? -- because there are things incomplete. Whenever something is complete you don't look back. It is finished! The full point has been achieved, there is nothing more to do about it. Act out of nothingness and your action is total, and the total action leaves no memory -- no psychological memory, I mean.

 

The memory is left in the brain, but there is no psychological hangup. And a man who has no hangups is my definition of a sannyasin.

 

When the act is utterly complete, you are free of it. When the act is total, you slip out of it -- like a snake slips out of the old skin and the old skin is left behind. Only incomplete acts become karma, remember it. But to have a complete act, it has to come out of nothingness.

 

-Osho, “The Heart Sutra, #5“