Question – Beloved Master, What is the meaning of sannyas in the world today?

Osho – The word `sannyas’ is one of the most significant in the human language. In the past it was given a wrong meaning. That wrong meaning destroyed its beauty, its joy, its laughter. The wrong meaning was renunciation. Renunciation of what? Renunciation of the body. Renunciation of all the pleasures of the body, the mind, the heart. Renunciation of the world, of the people, of those you love, of those you are grateful to. Renunciation of your parents who have given birth to you, who have sacrificed everything for you. Renunciation of your wives and your husbands who live for you and who die for you. Renunciation of small children who without you will not have a shelter in the world, without you will be orphans, beggars.

That was the old meaning of the word `sannyas’. It has destroyed humanity from its very roots. On the one hand all the old religions say that God created the world, God created you, God created everything. And at the same time they say, renounce what God has created. It seems your priests are more wise than God. It seems that what God creates, your priests are against.

Let me summarize it in a single statement: all the religions and their priests are against God. If God is the creator of the world, then to renounce it or to teach renunciation is an act of sabotage. It cannot be called religious, it is not spiritual.

My sannyas gives it the right meaning it deserves. My sannyas does not mean renunciation, it means rejoicing — rejoicing in this beautiful world, rejoicing with totality, intensity, awareness, compassion, love, of all that existence has provided for you without any guilt, without any sin. All ideas about guilt and sin are created to exploit you.

Yes, man commits mistakes, but mistakes are not sin. It is human to err. Mistakes can be corrected, just a little intelligence is needed. You need not ask to be forgiven for your mistakes. You need not go to the Ganges, to take a bath to get rid of your sins — that is simply stupid. You need not go to Kaaba or to Jerusalem. All your mistakes need a little understanding so that you can avoid them.

I am reminded of a story…. A man used to sell Gandhi caps. And particularly at election times he earned enough to rest for five years. The elections were coming nearer, but the man was getting old. He was sick. He had prepared thousands of caps. He said to his young son, “I will not be able to go to the market” — which was a few miles away from his village — “you will have to go, but it is not a difficult thing. There is great demand for the caps, as the elections come closer.

“Just remember one thing: going to the market, the road is tremendously beautiful, very scenic. On both sides it has great, beautiful trees, with thick shadow, and one wants to rest, to sit for a while. I want you to be warned about what happened to me once when I was resting under a banyan tree.

“It was so calm, so quiet, that I fell asleep. When I woke up I was surprised. My bag of caps was empty — all the caps were gone. I looked all around, and then I heard monkeys giggling above me on the tree. They all had the Gandhi caps on. Just the way I was wearing one cap, they had imitated me. Although I was in great misery that they had destroyed my whole business, still I enjoyed. They looked so beautiful, as if all the great leaders from New Delhi had come on the tree! Then I remembered the advice my father had given to me, because the same thing had happened to him. History repeats. He had told me that if something like this happens, just throw your own cap. I threw my cap, and all the monkeys threw their caps. I collected the caps and went to the market….

“So you remember! In the first place, don’t stay under a tree where monkeys are. And in case you have to rest, and something like this happens, remember the advice.”

The son went, and the father was right — there was a beautiful, big banyan tree. Hundreds of bullock carts could have rested in its shadow. It was so calm and so quiet, so far away from all villages that he could not resist the temptation to rest for a while. He was tired too, it was a hot day.

He rested, and when he woke up, he found the bag was empty. He looked up. The monkeys were sitting on the tree with the caps on their heads. But he was not puzzled, because he knew the secret. He threw his cap. One monkey came down, took the cap, went up the tree. He could not believe what had happened. The monkeys had learned! And this was the only monkey who had not got a cap! They were waiting for when this idiot would throw his cap… and they had a great rejoicing. Even monkeys learn.

It seems only man does not learn. Your old sannyas has in every way destroyed your life. It has made everything condemned. Your love is sin, your being comfortable is sin, your being rich is sin… Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the kingdom of God.” Can anybody who has a little sense, agree with Jesus that “blessed are the poor”? If the poor are blessed, then why is everybody trying to remove the poverty from the world? Then let the poverty grow because it is a blessing! The more poor you are, the more blessed you are. Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world. You are blessed according to Jesus. You should be happy. You will enter into the kingdom of God before any American.

In fact, the American cannot enter at all, because another statement of Jesus is: “A camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but the rich man cannot pass through the gates of paradise.”

These people have helped you to be poor. And I don’t see that poverty has any spirituality in it. I don’t see that you cannot meditate living in a comfortable house — that you have to meditate only when you are uncomfortable, that you have to stand on your head, that only then can you reach paradise.

It is very strange, because I have seen thousands of descriptions of God, but I have not come across a single description in which he is standing on his head. If God is not doing shirshasana, then why should you be bothered? Why should you torture your body? I have not come across a single description where God goes on fasts. Then why should you fast?

But the whole old idea of sannyas was that to attain to paradise you have to live in misery, you have to go through suffering. I don’t see that there is any need. I say to you: you can go singing, you can go dancing, you can go rejoicing. And this is my absolute trust — that God, or existence, cannot be against laughter, cannot be against rejoicing, cannot be against joy.

I don’t think that in suffering, poverty, torturing yourself, torturing others because of your renunciation, you are becoming beloved of existence. You are going farther away from the source of life; you are coming closer to death, and death is not the goal of religion. The goal of religion is eternal life, and life includes rejoicing.

Hence I teach a sannyas which is just the opposite of the old sannyas — diametrically opposite. I want my people to go to heaven, to paradise — all the way dancing, singing songs of joy. And I think they will be the first to enter into the kingdom of God, not the people who are basically sick.

I would like you to remember what the old religions have been teaching to people. They have been making them schizophrenic. They have been creating a split in their personality. They are making them divided against themselves. There have been saints, whose only quality and contribution is that they were very efficient in torturing themselves. You know perfectly well they will lie down on a bed of thorns. This is tapascharya, this is austerity. But do you think existence wants you to lie down on a bed of thorns? Is existence a sadist that it wants you to be tortured?

There have been Christian sects — they are still in existence — which wear shoes with nails inside protruding into their feet, so when they walk they are continuously hurting, wounding their feet; continuously blood is flowing. They have belts around their waists with the same device — nails reaching deep into their skin. The wounds remain for their whole life, because those belts cannot be removed. They are locked, and their keys are thrown away. They have taken that austerity for their whole life. Do you think this is something healthy, something sane?

In Soviet Russia, before the revolution, there was a great Christian sect — the most prominent and the most respected. But you will be surprised when you come to know the reason for their respectability. They used to cut off their genitals. They were real celibates, because a man can take the vow of being a celibate but his genitals are there intact. Who knows? He may be deceiving…!

Thousands of Christian monks would cut off their genitals publicly. The women were at a loss, but they came up with an idea — they started cutting off their breasts. This was thought to be a great spiritual act. And the same kind of thing, more or less, has prevailed all over the world in the name of sannyas.

I want the beautiful word `sannyas’ to be taken away from all its old associations, and I want to give it a new meaning, a new fragrance, a new health, a new wholeness. I want you to remember a simple fact: that what is natural is divine, and what is unnatural is evil.

Celibacy is evil because it is unnatural. To follow the course of nature, to remain in a deep contact with all that is natural, not fighting it but in a deep friendship, in a let-go — that is my definition of sannyas.

You can swim against the river, against the current — that was the old sannyas. I don’t say to you even to swim. I want you to float and go with the river in a deep let-go, in a deep trust, wherever it leads. Existence cannot deceive you. We are born of it, we are its children. How can it deceive us? It does not deceive the rosebushes; it brings them beautiful roses. It does not deceive the lotuses. It does not deceive the birds. It does not deceive the sun, the moon, the stars. Why should it deceive its greatest creation, human consciousness — its highest peak? No, it is impossible.
Existence is with you. You just have to learn how to be with it. And to be with it totally, without any conditions, is what I mean by sannyas.

Source – Osho Book “The Sun Rises in The Evening”

Osho – That is why I can initiate anyone into sannyas. To me, initiation itself is a play. And I will not ask for any qualifications – whether you are qualified or not – because qualifications are asked when something serious is done. Just by existing everyone is qualified enough to play, and even if he is unqualified to be a sannyasin it makes no difference, because the whole thing is just a play.

So I will not ask for any qualifications. And my sannyas does not involve any obligation either. The moment you are a sannyasin, or a sannyasini, you are totally at freedom. It means that you have taken a decision, and this is the last decision: to live in indecision, to live in freedom.

The moment you are initiated into sannyas, you are initiated into an uncharted, unplanned future. Now you are not tethered by the past; you are free to live. So a sannyasin, to me, is a person who decides to live to the utmost, to the optimum, to the maximum. Moment to moment you live; moment to moment you act. Each moment is complete in itself. You do not decide how to act; the moment comes to you, and you act. There is no predetermination; there is no preplan.

Sannyas means living moment to moment, with no commitments to the past. If I give you a mala and if I give you new clothes, this is only for your remembrance: to remind you that now you do not have to make any decisions, now you are no longer the old. When this awareness becomes so deep that you do not need to remember it, then throw the robe, then throw the mala. But not until the awareness becomes so deep that now, even in sleep, you know that you are a sannyasin. So a new name, a new robe, a mala – these are just devices to help you; to help you toward freedom, to help you toward total being, to help you toward total action.

Sannyas means that you have come to realize that you are a seed, a potentiality. Now you have taken the decision to grow; and this is the last decision. To decide to grow is a great renunciation – renunciation of the security of the seed, renunciation of the ”wholeness” of the seed. But this security is at a very great cost. The seed is dead; it is only potentially living. Unless it becomes a tree, unless it grows, it is dead – only potentially living. And as far as I know, human beings, unless they decide to grow, unless they take a jump into the unknown, are like seeds: dead, closed.

To be a sannyasin is to take a decision to grow, to take a decision to move into the unknown, to take a decision to live in indecision. It is a jump into the unknown. It is not a religion and it is not bound to any religion; it is religiousness itself.

Source – Osho Book “Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy”

[A visitor says: I don’t know if taking sannyas means something extra that doesn’t permit an equilibrium between work and a spiritual association.]

Osho – No, nothing. It is a simple gesture of your trust in me. It is not in any way anti-life or anti-world. I am absolutely life-affirmative. I am as epicurean a person as you can find.

So sannyas is not life-negative – my sannyas is not. The old concept of sannyas was against sansar, against the world. You could not do this and you could not eat that, and you could not be like this – a thousand and one rules and regulations. No, it is a simple inner trust. It is a gesture of surrender – that you love me and you will allow me to love you… that If I shower my love on you, you will receive it in gratefulness… that in your meditative work you will seek my help. And if I give you my help, you will receive it.

Just two very small things I insist on – the orange and the mala, nothing else. And the third thing is interior – to meditate. Everything else you continue as you are doing. As your understanding grows and a few things drop, that’s another thing. I am not saying to drop them. For example if you are smoking, I am not saying drop it. Continue. But if your meditation grows a little deeper, smoking may disappear. You may not find the same addiction as before. It may become pointless, irrelevant.

It may wither away by itself. Then it is one thing. Otherwise I am not saying stop it. If you drink, continue drinking, because my understanding is that unless you change, your habits cannot change. So my emphasis is on you – your awareness, your meditativeness. If your meditation grows a little higher, suddenly you see that it is a wastage of life and energy; you cannot drink. Then it disappears – but it is not a discipline imposed; it is an inner understanding. Otherwise I make no condition for it.

[The visitor explains: But my problem is that I cannot be here for long. I think it’s a very personal communication between a teacher and a disciple that grows, but maybe this communication can happen also, if I am in bombay (where he is working).]

Osho – Yes, wherever you are. If you are in rome, it will not make any difference; it can happen. And once you are a sannyasin you have a personal line from me… a direct telephone. And it can happen. Space and time is not of much importance. And you can come sometimes whenever it is possible.

Source – Osho Book “Dance Your Way to God”

Osho – Visarjan means dissolution, dissolution into the divine, immersion in the divine, the state of being lost…. One has to learn how to disperse oneself, how to come to a point where one is not. Only then god is. You and god cannot exist together; that’s not possible. That’s why so many people go on missing god – because they are asking for the impossible: they want to remain themselves and they want to see god. God can be seen only when you are not. That nothingness can encounter god, not you.

So the whole process of sannyas is the process of visarjan, dispersion. Slowly, slowly, one loses, goes on losing, goes on losing. The more one loses, the more one understands how beautiful it is not to be. Then more courage arises, a little bit more. One goes a little deeper and a little deeper, and one day the final risk, the final gamble: one simply jumps and disappears. In that very moment there is god. That moment is god.

Deva means divine, rasila means juice, juicy. And the juice that runs through our veins is divine, the blood that runs through our veins is divine. Dust is divine… all is divine. One has to start enjoying this; then more juice comes. One has to start sharing it. The more you give, the more you are given. Another name for that juice is love. When you give love, new energies start flowing in you. That’s why whenever somebody falls in love they start feeling young again. Whenever love is stuck and the doors are closed, one starts feeling old.

Let love flow more… and don’t be a miser. Because this is the paradox of life: the economics of the divine is just the reverse of the economics of the world. In the ordinary economics if you don’t hoard you will not have; m the divine economics if you hoard you will not have. In the ordinary economics if you don’t give you will have; if you give you will lose. In the divine economics just the opposite is the truth: if you give you will have; if you don’t give you will lose. That’s what jesus means when he says: Those who try to save their lives will lose them. The loser in the divine game is the winner… the defeated is the victorious. And he who is nobody is all. Nothingness is fullness.

So go on giving to everybody and anybody. There is no need to make any conditions. Never say that you will give only when this is fulfilled: never give with conditions. To give with conditions is to destroy the whole beauty of it. It is immensely beautiful when it is unconditional. When you enjoy giving, when you are not giving in order to get, you get, you certainly get; you get a thousandfold.

That is another story…. So let this juice that you are carrying in yourself, flow. And don’t confine it to your husband, to your children only. Give them as much as you can but don’t confine your love; there should be no limit to it. Don’t confine it to your race, religion, colour, the country. Don’t confine it! Love is god’s gift: it should be given to all. It should be given not only to persons but to things too. Once you have learned the secret – that the more you give, the more it comes, and you go on becoming younger and younger and you go on becoming fresher and fresher, and you go on becoming livelier and livelier – then you have stumbled upon the greatest secret of life, the key. It can open the door of the ultimate. Love is the key for the door to god.

And in India we call it ’ras’ – juice – because it is really the sweetest taste possible. And it is not only a taste on the tongue… it is the taste that spreads all over your being, to every cell of your being. You become suffused with it. Every hair on your body starts tingling with it. It is a thrill that goes through and through. Every fibre of your being starts dancing in it. That’s why we have called it ’ras’, juice.

Let sannyas be your resurrection. Come here! This will be your new name… and a new beginning; a new birth. Forget the whole past as if it has never existed – as if you have seen it in a movie or you had heard about it from somebody else. Disconnect yourself from it. Yes, it will remain there in the brain cells as a memory but let the psychological memory of it disappear. And those two are two totally different things….

Source – Osho Book “Only Losers Can Win in This Game”

[A visitor asked what the agreement of sannyas meant.]

Osho – That you are no more. It is a total surrender. No agreement – because in an agreement there are two parties. You simply surrender. Much courage is needed…

It is not an agreement because it is not a legal thing. It is just a love affair… you fall in love. It is not an agreement because it is not a marriage. So if you feel love for me you take the jump and of course it needs courage, the greatest courage. All other courages are nothing compared to it, because before you were moving on familiar ground. Even if something new was there, it was not absolutely new. You knew it somehow; it had a context in your past, with your mind, with your intellect. You simply move in deep trust.

Much happens through it – and there is no other way of happening – because once you put yourself aside, all barriers drop. Suddenly you are open, vulnerable. That is the meaning of courage – to remain vulnerable. Whatsoever happens, one remains open. Storms may come, but still one never closes the doors. Once you close the door, it is closed against the enemy. It is also dosed against the friend. A closed door makes no difference between the enemy and the friend.

In fear we close ourselves. Of course we close ourselves against death – but life is also left outside. This is the risk: if you want to live, you have to live with death constantly. So if you want in short what sannyas is, it is losing your head. And you have nothing else to lose except your head. So let me cut it, mm?

Source – Osho Book “Nothing to Lose But Your Head”

Osho – Bliss is a bridge, misery is a wall. It is everyone’s experience that whenever one feels miserable one does not want to relate with anybody; one wants to close one’s doors and hide somewhere. Just the opposite happens when you are blissful. You cannot hide somewhere; you would like to run under the open sky, in the sun, on the beach, you would like to meet people, relate, share. This has always been the case.

When Buddha was miserable as a king he renounced the kingdom, went into the forest and lived a lonely life, but when he became blissful he came back to the people. The same happened with Mahavira, he was also a king. He renounced his kingdom, went into loneliness and lived for twelve years without speaking a single word — absolutely silent.

Not to speak means to totally cut oneself off from others — because language relates. It is because of language that there are human societies. Animals don’t have any society, they all live a closed life because they cannot speak. Without language there is no society, no culture, no civilisation. To be silent means to cut oneself off from society. In a psychological way it is getting into one’s loneliness absolutely, closing all the doors, all the windows.

But when Mahavira became enlightened, when his heart was full of bliss, overflowing, he went back to the people. For forty years continuously he spoke, related, shared his experience. Bliss always helps you to be connected. And to be connected with people, with trees, with animals, with rivers, with mountains, is to be bridged with god because there is no god other than this universe. This universe is the manifest form of god, and if you relate and love the manifest form finally you will be able to enter into the unmanifest too.

Once you have seen flowers you will be able to see flowers in the seed too. In the seed they are unmanifest but they are there. So god exists with these two aspects. The visible aspect is the universe but to reach to the invisible aspect you have to go through the visible. Hence I don’t teach renunciation. If you renounce the manifest god, the visible god, the universe, you will never be able to relate with the invisible because the invisible exists as the centre and the visible as the circumference. The moment you run away from the circumference you are renouncing the centre too.

You have to penetrate into the circumference; you have to go so deeply into it that you reach the centre. Hence my approach, my sannyas, is a way of bridging, a way of rejoicing, a way of bliss. Be blissful and god is not far away. When you are totally blissful, when not even a trace of misery is left inside you, when only god is, within, without, everywhere, whatsoever you see is god and the seer also is god, the seen and the seen, the known and the knower, all become one — that experience of oneness with existence is the ultimate goal of sannyas.

Source – Osho Book “Just the Tip”

Osho – To be a sannyasin is to take a decision to grow, to take a decision to go into dangers, to
take a decision to live in indecision. This seems paradoxical. It is not. One has to begin somewhere, and even to live indecisively one has to have a decision somewhere. Even to go into insecurity is going somewhere, and one has to decide it. I help your decision and create a situation in which you can make a decision. This neo-sannyas can go to the very
core of the world. It can reach to everyone because nothing special is needed — only understanding.

Another thing I would like to explain is that this sannyas is not bound to any religion. On this earth every type of sannyas has been part and parcel of a particular religion, a particular sect. That too is is a part of a security measure. You renounce, yet you belong. You say, “I have left the society,” yet you belong to the sect. You go on being a Hindu, a
Moslem or a Sikh. You go on being something. Really, sannyas means to be religious and not to be bound to any religion. Again, it is a great jump into the unknown. Religions are known, but religion is the unknown. A sect has systems, religion has no system. A sect has scriptures; religion has only existence, no scriptures. This sannyas is existential, religious, nonsectarian.

That does not mean that this sannyas will deny a Mohammedan Mohammedanism, that this sannyas will deny a Christian Christianity — no! It means, really, quite the reverse. It means it will give the Christians the real Christianity. It will give the Hindu the real Hinduism, because the deeper you go into the Hindu religion, ultimately the Hinduism will drop and you will find religiousness only. The deeper you go into Christianity, the less it will be like Christianity and the more like religion. At once, you reach to the center of the religion.

So when I say by becoming a sannyasin you belong to no religion as such, I do not mean that you are denying Christianity or Hinduism or Jainism. You are only denying the dead part that has become burdensome in religion. You are only denying the dead tradition, and you are uncovering and discovering again the living current, the living current behind all the dead — dead traditions, dead scriptures, dead gurudoms, dead churches.

You are again finding the living current. It is always there but it is always to be rediscovered; each one has to discover it again. It cannot be transferred, it cannot be transmitted. No one can give it to you. Whatever has been given will be dead. You will have to dig it deep within yourself, otherwise you never find it. So I am not giving you a religion, I am giving you only the push to find the living current. It will be your own finding, and it can never be anyone else’s. So I am not transmitting anything to you.

There is a parable…. Buddha comes one day with a flower in his hand. He is to give a sermon, but he remains silent. Those who have come to listen to him begin to wonder what he is doing. Time is passing. It has never happened like this — what is he doing? They wonder whether he is going to speak or not. Then someone asks, “What are you doing? Have you forgotten that we have come to listen to you?”

Buddha says, “I have communicated something. I have communicated something which cannot be communicated through words. Have you heard it or not?”

No one has heard it. But one disciple — a very unknown disciple, known here for the first time, a bhikkhu named Mahakashyapa — laughs heartily. Buddha says, “Mahakashyapa, come to me. I give you this flower, and I declare that all that could be given through words I have given to you all. That which is really meaningful, which cannot be given
through words, I give to Mahakashyapa.”

So Zen tradition has been asking again and again, “But what was transmitted to Mahakashyap?” — a transmission without words. What has Buddha said? What has Mahakashyapa heard? And whenever there is someone who knows, he laughs again, and the story remains a mystery. When someone understands, he laughs again. Wherever there are persons who are scholars, who know much and who know nothing, they will discuss what has been told, they will decide about what has been heard. But someone who knows will laugh.

Bankei, a great Zen teacher, said, “Buddha said nothing. Mahakashyapa heard nothing.”
So someone asks, “Buddha said nothing?”

“Yes,” Bankei said. “Yes, nothing was said; nothing was heard. It was said, and it was
heard. I am a witness.”
So someone said, “You were not there.”

So Bankei said, “I need not have been there. When nothing was communicated, no one is needed to be a witness. I was not there, and yet I am a witness.” Someone laughed, and Bankei said, “He was also a witness.”

The living current cannot be communicated. It is always there, but you have to go to it. It is nearby, just by the corner. It is in you, you are the living current. But you have never been in. Your attention has always been out, you have been out-oriented. You have become fixed. Your focus has become deadly fixed, so you cannot conceive of what it means to be in. Even when you try to be in, you just close your eyes and go on being out.

To be in means to be in a state of mind where there is no out and where there is no in. To be in means there is no boundary between you and the all. When there is nothing out, only then you come to the inner current. And once you have a glimpse, you are transformed. You know something which is incomprehensible, you know something which intellect cannot comprehend, you know something which intellect cannot communicate.

Source – Osho Book “I am The Gate”

Osho – Love needs the greatest courage in life, for the simple reason that the basic requirement for moving into the world of love is dissolving your ego — and that is the hardest thing to do.

We cling to the ego like anything. We are ready to die for it, but we are not ready to let it die because it defines us, it gives us an identity. It gives us a separate existence. It makes us feel important, significant. But because basically the ego is a false phenomenon all these feelings are rooted in a fallacy; hence deep down we are always aware that the importance that ego gives is bogus, it is phony.

We know it and yet we don’t want to know it. We are aware of it and yet we don’t want to know it. We are aware of it yet we want to be oblivious of it. This is the human dilemma, To get into love means to get out of this dilemma, to drop the fallacy, to drop the phony and the pseudo and to be simply a non-entity, a nothingness. But out of that nothingness something of immense value arises. life becomes a celebration.

With ego life is a misery, because if you are rooted in something false you cannot celebrate. Only truth can release the energies of celebration in you. Only truth can become a song in your heart. The ego is the greatest lie: all other lies are by-products of it. And because it is a lie it stinks, because it is a lie it creates a thousand and one problems around itself. It hides behind those problems. It creates a great facade of misery, so many clouds of misery that you get involved in misery and you forget everything about the root cause of it all.

The moment ego is dropped — and it is only a question of your decision, if you want to drop it you can drop it right now, nothing can prevent you from dropping it except yourself — instantly your life goes through a radical change, it goes through a revolution. Great poetry and great music arises in you. Just a few moments ago I was reading these lines of Walt Whitman — I love these lines! He was one of the most significant poets who has ever walked on the earth.

He says:
I celebrate myself, I sing myself.
And what I assume you shall assume.
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
That’s the message of all the seers, of all those who have known, and particularly my message is celebration.

Let your whole heart say ‘I celebrate myself, I sing myself.’ But remember, the self is not the ego, the self is something beyond the ego. The ego is your creation; the self is part of god, the self is part oh the supreme self. The self does not make you a separate individual, it does not make an island of you. It keeps you one with the whole; hence the celebration, hence the joy, hence the ecstasy.

Walt Whitman’s line defines my sannyas precisely. Remember it. Love, bliss, celebration, god, truth, freedom — they are different aspects of the same phenomenon. Ego dropped, you enter into a multi-dimensional reality which contains all these things. But one certainly needs courage, one needs guts. Be courageous enough to live whole-heartedly to live in tune with the infinite, with the eternal.

Source: Osho Book “The Imprisoned Splendor”

Osho – Sannyas is not prayer with sadness, seriousness. It is not prayer as a ritual, as a formality. It is prayer as playfulness. It is prayer as cheerfulness. The birds in the morning singing — that is prayer. They are not Christians, they are not Hindus, they are not Mohammedans; they don’t know anything about the church and the temple and the mosque, and they have never heard that there are scriptures — but their singing is prayer. The wind passing through the pine trees is prayer; although it knows nothing of prayer it is prayerful.

The prayer is all over the space. The stars are prayerful, the trees are prayerful, the oceans are prayerful. Except for man the whole existence is always in a state of prayer; only man needs to move towards it consciously — for a certain reason: man is the only conscious animal. Hence man has a choice: he can fall out of the natural flow of existence or he can become part of it. No other animal has that freedom. The birds in the morning are not singing out of their own choice, they are simply singing instinctively. The trees are prayerful and the mountains are prayerful, but that prayer is just a natural phenomenon.

Man’s dignity is that he can choose to be prayerful — but that can also become his fall because he can also choose not to be prayerful. Man is always at the crossroads: each step and there is a choice, each step and you can go wrong or right. When sadness and cheerfulness confront you, always choose cheerfulness. When seriousness and playfulness confront you, always choose playfulness. And remember: we become whatsoever we choose. It is simply a question of choice.

A Sufi mystic was dying. His disciples gathered and they said “One thing we always wanted to ask but we could never gather enough courage to ask … If we don’t ask now we will never be able to ask because you will be leaving the body. So now whatsoever you think of us … you can think of us as fools, but we have to ask the question. How did you manage your whole life? — because we have never seen you serious, sad, unhappy; you have always been blissful. How did you manage? — because it is impossible to be so blissful day in, day out.”

The old man laughed and he said “Early in my life I discovered that it is a question of choice. So this has become my daily routine: every morning — this morning too — the first thing in the morning, before I open my eyes, I think ‘Now a new day is going to be there — what do you want, old man? Do you want to be happy or unhappy?’ And I always choose happiness.”

If you know that it is a question of choice you are bound to choose happiness always. People think that we are victims; that is wrong, we are not victims. It is not that situations go on dragging us into unhappiness and sometimes into happiness, that we are just at the mercy of blind forces — no, not at all, a thousand times no. Every moment we are choosing. Maybe our choie is unconscious, we may not ve consciously choosing, but choice is there.

From this moment start becoming aware of it and you will be surprised: sometimes in the middle of your sadness suddenly the clouds disperse and it is sunny, because suddenly you see the point — that you have chosen to be sad and there is no need to be sad! Life is such a beautiful gift that one should not waste a single moment in sadness, in anger, in jealousy, in possessinveness. One should dance one’s way to God. One should laugh one’s way to God!

So I am giving a totally new concept to sannyas. The old sannyas was sad and serious; Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, Buddhist — all old approaches of sannyas were of renunciation. My approach is that of rejoicing. Rejoice and rejoice and rejoice again and again! The moment you decide to be blissful misery starts escaping from you, but the decision has to be total. It is worth getting involved in being blissful. There can’t be anything more valuable.

So drop all sadness, all seriousness. And don’t ask how to drop them. That is a strategy of the mind to go on keeping them, it is a way of postponement. “How” is a way of post-ponement. Simply drop misery. Don’t linger on, don’t post-pone it. Say goodbye and don’t look back. And you will be surprised that it is so simple. It is so natural to be blissful. It is unnatural to be miserable. It is really a very difficult job to be miserable, but people are so skillful, so intelligent at being miserable. They have become great artists of misery. If there is nothing to be miserable about they will invent something.

I have heard that a psychiatrist advised his patient to go to the mountains for three or four weeks for a rest. The third day he received a telegram from the patient: “I am feeling wonderful — why? ”

People cannot accept bliss easily; misery is okay. Remember that it is only a question of your decision; in a single blow one can cut the Gordian knot, and one can be free on a single quantum leap. Sannyas is not practicing bliss, it is simply renouncing misery. Bliss takes a lion’s heart.

Source – Osho Book “Scriptures in Silence and Sermons in Stones”

Osho – A few things about sannyas…. It is an initiation into the formless. It is not an initiation into some rigid form, it is not giving you a certain discipline — on the contrary it is an initiation into freedom, into a formless creative chaos.

The old concept of sannyas all over the world was to give you a rigid discipline, to give you a character, to give you a certain form, a pattern, a life style. My sannyas is not like that at all; it is a radical charge. I don’t give you any character, because to me the man of character is a dead man.

I would like to take all character from you so you are left in a creative chaos… so each moment one has to respond to life, not out of a certain pattern. The pattern comes from the past, and if the pattern predominates, the past predominates, and to be guided by the past is to be guided by death. The past is dead.

To respond in the moment without any pattern, just out of spontaneity — whatsoever the feeling of the moment decides, to act just like that — is what I call ‘creative chaos’… a characterless consciousness, a present without past, a freedom unhindered by any discipline. This very process of relaxing into freedom is what brings a person to reality. The more we are, the less the reality is; the less we are, the more reality.

We are a kind of resistance: what we call the ego, the personality, is nothing but a kind of resistance to reality. It is a kind of frozenness, it is a kind of fear and greed. It is a kind of private idiocy — that you would like to live your own life. It is against the universal and the total, hence it brings misery.

Sannyas means: now I will live in the universal. I will not have any private opinion of life — I will let the whole decide; I will not pretend the part is the whole. I will no more be decisive on my own. I will allow the decision to arise in my consciousness and take possession of me.

To live that way is to live the life of a sannyasin. It is utterly beautiful, utterly blessed, but great courage is needed because you don’t have a guide, you don’t have a particular form; you cannot depend on the past. One has to move from the unknown to the unknown and one never knows what is going to happen next moment, where one is going to land. There is no security in it, no safety in it; it is pure adventure.

So I don’t make you a hindu, I don’t make you a Christian or a Mohammedan; I simply make you a non-being. And there is every possibility that the freedom can grow in you. Just a slight push, just a little courage. And you are on the brink; the jump can happen any moment. It will not need any preparation — it will need only courage.

In fact, preparation is a kind of cowardice: people prepare to avoid the fact that they are cowards. When you are not a coward there is no need for any preparation. And all illumination is sudden, it is not gradual. It is not that slowly, slowly, you become blessed, no. Just a single moment before you were in misery and a single moment afterwards all misery has disappeared: it is a quantum leap.

This is the very revolution that this new kind of sannyas brings into life. So from this moment keep a little alert not to allow the past to interfere. Let the present moment be decisive; let it gain more power. And don’t think too much of the consequences. The man who thinks of consequences becomes a coward.

This moment, whatsoever feels right, do it — whatsoever the consequences. Don’t be too considerate of the consequences. We consider the consequences too much and we go on missing the opportunity. The opportunity is only for those who can take it, so don’t be at all concerned about the consequences and the results; they come on their own.
If one acts totally in the present a beautiful future is automatically created. If you have been loving in this moment, the next moment is going to be of greater love, obviously, because it will grow out of this moment; it cannot come from anywhere else. You need not worry about it.

A man who becomes courageous enough to live in the present starts creating a future without even thinking about it. And a man who is not courageous and goes on thinking about consequences, pros and cons — what will happen if he does this and what will happen if he does that — goes on missing the present. And naturally he goes on missing the future too, because if you don’t sow the seeds now there is not going to be any morrow.

Tomorrow again you will be thinking about another tomorrow because when tomorrow comes it comes as today. You become accustomed to the habit of thinking always of the tomorrow and the tomorrow never comes. So only this moment is, and to live in this moment as if it is absolute — no past, no future — is what sannyas is all about.

It needs tremendous courage and it is the greatest adventure there is, but it brings great ecstasies — unimagined, never even dreamt about. It brings great joy, great celebration… and unmotivated, uncaused: one simply feels joyful for no particular reason at all.

When joy is without any reason it is divine; when it has some reason it is ordinary, it is just worldly. You have won a lottery and are feeling happy; a friend has come to see you and you are feeling happy — but your feeling happy is dependent on causes. Those causes will disappear soon and then you will become unhappy. So the same causes that create happiness will create unhappiness, and one goes on moving in this vicious circle. The search is to find a joy which is uncaused. One simply is joyful for no reason at all… one is joyful because one is.

Source – Osho Book “Far Beyond the Stars”

Osho – Earnestness, sincerity, authenticity — these are the foundations of sannyas. They are not different things but different aspects of the same phenomenon. One has to be utterly truthful about oneself. One need not hide, only cowards hide. The courageous person remains as he is, naked. He is ready to accept whatsoever the consequences, but he is not ready to compromise his truth. This is the only way to become an individual, this is the only way to have integrity.

The world teaches people to be pseudo, to be compromising. The world makes people deceptive, false. All your so-called morality, character, respectability, is nothing but an effort to create a facade so you can hide your reality, you can hide and you can go on showing a false face to the world. Whatsoever is expected from you, you can show it to the world. But a man who hides his reality and shows his falseness to the world becomes split, he becomes two. In fact he becomes many, because in each situation he has to use a different face.

You can’t use the same face with your wife that you use with your girlfriend. You can’t use the same face with the boss that you use with your servant. You have to carry many faces so that whatsoever the requirement of the situation, you wear a mask. Slowly slowly it becomes automatic. You need not change, they change of their own accord. To be in such a state means to be miserable, mad, divided in thousands of pieces. Life will be a chaos and a misery and a hell.

But one can drop the facade, one can drop all the masks. That’s what sannyas is: to be true, to be your original face. And then suddenly you start feeling a kind of strength which was never there before, because you start becoming one. All your fragments start melting into each other and they create a centre, they create integrity, they create individuality. Then one is earnest, sincere, authentic.

And that’s what religion is all about. Religion has nothing to do with God or heaven or hell and all kinds of theories and philosophies. The basic concern of religion is truth. And one has to live it, only then can one know it, there is no other way. It is not a belief, it has to be your own existential experience. You have to experience it in the innermost core of your very being. And that liberates. That brings freedom to you, bliss to you, benediction to you.

Source: Osho Book “If You Choose To Be With Me, You Must Risk Finding Yourself”