https://oshofriends.com/dictionary/72075
ACTION
The path of action is very paradoxical. The paradox is that you have to act and yet deep down you have to remain absolutely inactive; at the center there is absolute stillness, no action, not even a wave, not even a ripple, and on the circumference much action.
The path of action is being in the world and yet not being of it, remaining in the world and yet surpassing it, transcending it. Krishna has called it action without action. Zen people in Japan call it effortless effort, actionless action. Doing is there but the doer is not there. One simply becomes the centre of the cyclone but the cyclone remains only one's circumference. One becomes more like an actor; action becomes more like acting. It is as if you are just playing a role: you are doing it as perfectly as possible but it is still a role, a game; you are not really involved in it. You are doing it perfectly well and yet you are not getting involved in it, so whatsoever the result, it is none of your business -- if you succeed, if you fail, it is all the same.
It is one of the most beautiful paths to follow. And my sannyasins have to understand it very deeply because I am not telling them to renounce the world, to escape to the mountains, to the deserts, to the monasteries. I am telling them to remain in the world. I am not taking them out of the world, because that is escapist and that is cowardly, and one cannot be religious through cowardliness.
-Osho, "Going All the Way, #23"
Man represents action, woman represents non-action. You have to use action to attain non-action. You have to make effort to become effortless. You have to go and put in all your energies, you have to become so active that nothing is left behind. All energy becomes involved into that creativity, and then, suddenly, when all energy is involved, there happens a transformation. Just as at a hundred degrees water evaporates, action, when it becomes total, evaporates, and non-action is left behind.
First you have to learn how to dance, and you have to put all your energies into dancing. And one day that strange experience happens when suddenly the dancer disappears in the dance, and the dance happens without any effort. Then it is inaction. first you have to learn action to go into inaction. That's what meditation is all about.
People come and ask me why I teach active meditations -- because that is the only way to find inaction. Dance to the uttermost, dance in a frenzy, dance madly, and if your whole energy is involved in it, a moment comes when suddenly you see the dance is happening on its own -- there is no effort in it. It is action without action.
-Osho, "The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1, #2"
