In Buddhist ethics, few ideas are as striking as the notion that a fully awakened being — an Arahat — has gone beyond both good and bad karma. At first glance, this may seem to contradict the emphasis on moral conduct found throughout the tradition. But a deeper look reveals a profound insight into the nature of spiritual liberation.
The Arahat, having reached the culmination of the Noble Eightfold Path, is said to have abandoned both puñña (karmically fruitful actions) and pāpa (unwholesome or deadening actions). This does not mean the Arahat becomes indifferent or ethically careless. On the contrary, such a person is said to be “fully endowed with moral virtue and insight,” incapable of killing or acting out of hatred, and entirely free from the roots of greed, hatred, and delusion .
The key lies in understanding the motivation behind actions. For ordinary people, even wholesome actions are often tinged with subtle clinging — to outcomes, identity, merit, or virtue itself. These actions bear karmic fruit because they are still formed under the influence of conditions. The Arahat, however, acts without clinging or craving. Their actions arise spontaneously, not out of moral deliberation but from a purified heart that no longer wrestles with inner conflict.
There are two important senses in which the Arahat has gone beyond karmic fruitfulness. First, the Arahat no longer needs to “try” to do good. With the roots of harmful behavior destroyed, wholesome action becomes effortless. There is no inner resistance to virtue, and therefore no need for struggle or choice. Ethical conduct becomes a natural expression, like light from a flame.
Second, and more radically, the Arahat’s actions no longer generate karmic results. This is because karma — whether wholesome or unwholesome — is conditioned by craving and ignorance. Without these defilements, there is no seed for future rebirth. Even good actions performed by an Arahat do not produce karmic consequences, because they do not reinforce the illusion of a self or feed the cycle of becoming.
The Buddha identified four types of actions:
- Dark with dark result — harmful actions rooted in greed, hatred, or delusion.
- Bright with bright result — wholesome actions that generate good karma.
- Mixed actions — containing both wholesome and unwholesome intentions.
- Actions that are neither bright nor dark, leading to the end of action — these are the actions of one walking the Noble Eightfold Path, and especially of the Arahat, whose actions are no longer entangled in karmic production .
The Arahat is thus described as “virtuous, but not made of virtue.” That is, their conduct is ethical without being driven by attachment to ethics. They are non-violent not because they cling to precepts, but because violence is no longer even a possibility in their being. This is ethical spontaneity — purity of heart beyond moral striving .
This teaching points toward a powerful paradox in Buddhist ethics. Moral effort is essential on the path, but it is eventually transcended. Karma is real, but not ultimate. Even good karma, if clung to, can bind. Freedom is found not in accumulating merit, but in going beyond the whole framework of gain and loss.
The Arahat lives in this freedom — still in the world, still acting, but no longer bound. No longer constructing a self, no longer fabricating future experience, the Arahat has gone beyond the wheel of becoming. Ethical in every way, yet untouched by the need to be ethical, this being becomes a quiet embodiment of the peace they have realized.