Neo-Sannyason Neo-SannyasinInitiation into FreedomOsho on Neo-Sannyas

 My Sannyasins are not my followers. 

- Sannyas is a direct relationship between a Sannyasin and God -

My sannyasins are not my followers. I am not a mediator between you, and the ultimate. My function is to help you to be directly connected to the universe -- just to give you a deep understanding of your own being and how to relax with the whole.

Sannyas is relaxation into the whole, disappearing into the whole, surrendering towards the whole. The true master never stands between anybody and the ultimate.

It is only the pseudo teacher who tries to pretend to be the vehicle of god, to be the messenger of god, to be the prophet of god, to be the son of goo, this and that, and tries to dominate people psychologically, spiritually. It is exploitation.

My sannyasins are not part of any religion. I impart to you a kind of religiousness, but not any ideology. I don't give you any knowledge, any doctrine, any philosophy. I simply help you to become silent, so silent that you can hear the still, small voice within -- and that is the voice of god. And once you have started hearing your own inner voice, you are on the right track. Then my function is fulfilled. Then I can say goodbye to you.

-Osho, "The Old Pond ... Plop, #23"

 A sannyasin simply means: 

 who has agreed to meditate. Nothing more. 

Question :

I'm thinking of the sannyasins. is that definition still hold true that work is meditation?

The work is just meditation. A sannyasin simply means: who has agreed to meditate. Nothing more. Who is willing to go as far as possible. It is his declaration, his dedication, his commitment -- to himself, not to anybody functioning as an authority. He is declaring to himself that "I am deciding to go in." And his sannyas is only a remembrance. His change of clothes is nothing but to remind him continuously, twenty-four hours, that now he has chosen meditation as his path. The day he has achieved, there is no need for his red clothes, but again the same question.

People who have attained still are using red clothes. They feel a certain even to those clothes, because for years, twenty-four hours they were reminding them. They have become something of tremendous value to them. They have helped them on the path.

So sannyas is only a declaration. The work is meditation. In one single word, my religion is complete, and that is meditation.

-Osho, “The Last Testament, Vol 2, #15”

 Sannyas will be a matter of a direct relationship 

 between them and God. 

I have decided to be a witness to your being initiated into sannyas. I will be a witness for friends who are ready to join one of the three categories of sannyasins that I have mentioned. I will not be their Master, but only a witness to their initiation into sannyas. In fact, sannyas will be a matter of a direct relationship between them and God. There is going to be no ritual for initiation into sannyas, so that one does not have any difficulty in leaving it when he feels like it. And sannyas will not be a serious affair

-Osho, "Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy #22“

 My sannyasin has to be both: 

 with roots in the interior world

and with flowers in the exterior world. 

 My sannyasin has to be both: 

 capable of intellect and also capable of intuition. 

My sannyasin represents togetherness of action and meditation He is in the world and yet not of it. He is like a lotus flower coming out of dirty mud, but transforming the mud into the beauty of a lotus, living in a lake yet untouched by the water, absolutely untouched.

A true sannyasin should be in the world, in action, and deeply rooted in meditation. Your roots should be in meditation, your branches should be in action. You should be like a tree: its branches go high in the sky, they are longings for the stars; it goes on rising high.

But remember, a tree goes high only if its roots go deep, in the same proportion: deeper the roots, higher the branches; higher the branches, deeper the roots. They balance each other. Roots have to be in meditation and branches in the world — in the full sunlight, dancing in the wind, whispering with the clouds — and deep inside you, in the inner world, growing roots into meditation. Then you will be a full tree.

Up to now two types of people have existed: a few have existed without roots — of course, without roots a tree is bound to be false — and few people have existed just as roots without trees, and just roots are ugly. Have you seen beautiful roots? Flowers are beautiful, but flowers need foliage, branches, the sun, the moon, the stars, the rain, the wind — they need the whole world — then those colorful flowers… these both have to be together; only then you will be an integrated, whole being.

The worldly has only branches but no roots, hence he is dull, juiceless, dry, dead, a corpse, just somehow dragging, out of old habit. And your monks, your nuns — Catholic Hindu, Jain, whatsoever their denomination — they are just roots, ugly, not worth looking at. No question of respect, not even worth looking once — the question of twice does not arise — and without any flowers.

My sannyasin has to be both: with roots in the interior world and with flowers in the exterior world. My sannyasin has to be both: capable of intellect and also capable of intuition. There is no need to choose: whatsoever God has given has to be used to its fullest.

- Osho,  “I am That, #9”

 My sannyasins will have to face many antagonistic situations 

Being blissful is taking a risk — because the mob lives in misery, and naturally it does not allow anybody to be blissful. That hurts the crowd, it wounds the mob; they start thinking “How dare you be blissful?” They are very at ease if you are miserable; they are sympathetic, friendly, because you are just like them, you are not a foreigner. The moment you become blissful you are a foreigner, you are an outsider — and people have always been afraid of outsiders.

They know the insiders, they are familiar with them, they can rely on them because they are predictable, but the outsider is unpredictable. And the blissful person is the farthest away from the crowd. He is really a stranger; he belongs to another world, not only to another country. He speaks a totally different language, he lives a totally different kind of life; hence people feel a certain distance from such a person. Either they will condemn him as mad… that is their first reaction. That’s what they are doing to many people in Soviet Russia. They will torture them, give them psychological shocks, electric shocks. They cannot accept that you can be so blissful. It is not possible — you must be insane.

The first reaction of the society is to condemn the person as mad: if one is mad one can be ignored. And there are many people in the madhouses of the world who are not mad, they are simply different and people cannot tolerate that. If the person is very powerful, like Jesus, Buddha or Zarathustra, then you cannot just call him mad. He will persist, he will try to prove in every possible way that you are wrong. And in a way people start feeling doubtful about their own ideas. When they see a Buddha so silent, so blissful, such a beautiful space surrounding him, they become suspicious of their own idea that he is mad or that he is a fool. And people like Buddha are very persuasive, almost seductive.

Then the second step for the society is to condemn that man as anti-traditional, anti-religious, anti-country, and finish him somehow. They killed Socrates, Mansoor, and many others. One of the most beautiful men, a Sufi mystic, Sarmad, was killed — his head was cut off — for the simple reason that he was so blissful that the priests and the king conspired against him. Just before his head was cut off he said, “You can cut off my head, but you cannot cut my laughter. Even when my head is separate from me you will hear my laughter — I will haunt you!” And the beautiful story goes that when his head was cut off it rolled down the steps of the mosque where he was murdered — laughing, giggling!

Such people can be blissful in life and can be blissful in death too. That is the meaning of the story: they laugh their whole way to God. But that needs courage — and that is the meaning of your name: blissful courage. It needs a strong spirit because it will be going against the current.

My sannyasins will have to face many antagonistic situations. They will be thought outrageous, rebels, dropouts; all kinds of condemnations will be heaped upon them. And if they don’t listen — and they are not going to listen — then they will even be killed, condemned to death. But it is better to die rejoicing than to live in misery. Just a single moment of joy is far more valuable than an eternity of misery. I teach you only one thing, and that is, be blissful — whatsoever the cost.

- Osho, “Going All The Way, #24”

 Sannys is not so cheap 

- The emphasis was only on meditation. -

I want my people to understand it clearly. Neither your clothes, nor your outer disciplines nor anything that has been given to you by tradition and you have accepted it just on belief, is going to help. The only thing that can create a revolution in you is going beyond the mind into the world of consciousness.

Except that, nothing is religious. But to begin with and with a world which is too much obsessed with outer things, I had to start sannyas also with outer things.

Change your cloths into orange, wear a Mala, meditate, but the emphasis was only on meditation.

But I found that people can change their clothes very easily but they cannot change their minds. They can wear the Mala, but they cannot move into their consciousness. And because they are in orange cloths, wearing a Mala, having a new name, they start believing that they have become a sannyasin.

Sannyas is not so cheap. Hence it is time and you are mature enough that beginning phase is over. If you like the orange color, the red color, perfectly good -- it cannot do any harm, but it is not a help either. If you love the Mala, if you love the locket with my picture on it, it is simply your ornament, but it has nothing to do with religion. So now I reduce religion to its absolute essentiality.

And that is meditation. If you are meditating and if you are reaching higher and higher into your consciousness, thoughts are left far behind. You experience that your body is just outside you, your mind is just outside you and you are standing in the middle, the center of the cyclone, in utter silence, in absolute beauty, in great light, in utter fulfillment. Except the process of meditation, everything is non- essential.

I don't want my people to be lost into non- essentials. In the beginning it was necessary. Now years of listening to me, understanding me, you are in a position to be freed from all outer bondage. And you can for the first time be really a sannyasin only if you are moving inwards.

-Osho, “The Last Testament Vol 6, #13”

 Sannyas is a way to live your life in total danger. 

Sannyas is a crazy way of living life. The ordinary way is very sane, mathematical, calculated, cautious. The way of sannyas is non-calculative, beyond mathematics, beyond cunningness, cleverness. It is not cautious at all; it is knowingly moving into danger. [....]

Sannyas is a way to live your life in total danger. What do I mean when I say sannyas is living dangerously? It means living moment to moment without any past. The past makes your life convenient, comfortable, because the past is known; you are familiar with it, you are very efficient with it. But life is never past, it is always present. The past is that which is no more, and life is that which is. Life is always now, here, and all your knowledge comes from the past. Trying to live the present through the past is the way of the coward; it is the calculated way. People call it sanity, but it is very superficial and never adequate. There is no rapport with the present.

That’s why millions of people are so utterly fed up with life. Life is such a gift, and people are fed up with it. It is very strange and amazing. Why should people be so fed up with life? The reason is not life itself; the reason is they are carrying the mountainous load of the past: all their experiences, knowledge, information — what others have told them. They have accumulated great junk and they are carrying that junk. And the load is so heavy, and their eyes are covered with so much dust, that they cannot see the beauty of the present. And whatsoever they do see is something other than the reality. [....]

Sannyas means escaping from that prison. The prison may be of Hinduism or Mohammedanism or Christianity or Judaism or Jainism — it does not matter what the name of the prison is. On the earth there are three hundred religions; that means three hundred kinds of religious prisons. And there are thousands of ideologies; they are also prisons within prisons. And there are sects and subsects…. You must have seen Chinese boxes — boxes within boxes within boxes. You open one box, then another; you open that and then another; you go on opening and you always find a smaller box within. Each prison has more prisons inside it. Ultimately you are left only in a dark cell.

Sannyas is rebellion against all slavery; it is living life in absolute freedom. To live life in absolute freedom, without traditions, without conventions, without religions, without philosophies, without ideologies — political, social, and others — to live unburdened is sannyas. But it will look crazy to the whole world. Freedom looks crazy because everybody is living an imprisoned life. To prisoners, the person who escapes from the prison looks crazy, because for them prison is comfortable, convenient, secure, safe. [....]

Sannyas is an escape from the prison — Catholic or communist, it does not matter; it is an escape into the open. To live moment to moment is a crazy way, a poetic way, the way of the lover. People are living lives of prose — clear-cut but mundane, superficial. Anything which is very clear-cut is bound to be superficial. Life is mystery, and the only way to commune with it is through poetry, not prose.

The prose style of life is the ordinary lifestyle. The poetic style of life is sannyas. It is bound to be a little bit crazy — all poets are crazy, all painters are crazy, all dancers are crazy, all musicians are crazy. All that is great on this earth has something of madness in it. Zorba the Greek says to his boss, “Boss, everything is right in you, only one thing is missing — a little bit of madness!”

And I agree with Zorba. Sannyas gives you a little bit of madness, but that little bit of madness brings rainbows to your life. Multidimensional is that little bit of madness. It opens many doors which have remained closed for thousands of years. It allows the sun and the rain and the wind to come in. It gives you a chance to whisper with the clouds and the stars. It is a way of falling in love with existence. To live without falling in love with this tremendously beautiful existence is very stupid, ridiculous. That is missing the whole opportunity of being, of being alive, of being intensely alive, passionately alive.

Sannyas is a risk! The people who cannot take any risk cannot be sannyasins. Hence the people who are Hindu sannyasins are not real sannyasins; they are still clinging to the safety of the Hindu tradition. The VEDAS and the BHAGAVADGITA and the RAMAYANA — the whole past gives them the feeling that they are on the right track: “How can so many people be wrong?” They are following like sheep — a large crowd of sheep, ancient, very ancient, prehistoric! The more ancient a tradition is, the safer it looks.

The person who cannot risk, deals with life in a businesslike way — tries to cheat life, exploit life. He tries to give less and get more, because that is the way of profit. The sannyasin does not care at all about getting anything back from life; he simply gives in sheer trust, and he receives a millionfold. But that’s another matter; that is not his consideration at all. The man who is trying to exploit life will not get much out of it, and whatsoever he does get will remain inessential. He will remain a beggar and he will die a beggar. He will never know what it means to be an emperor.

The sannyasin knows what it means to be an emperor, because he simply gives; he enjoys giving, he loves sharing. And the miracle of life is: the more you give the more you have. When you give totally, the whole sky descends on you, the whole beyond becomes your within. Sannyas is hope — hope against all hope. People have lost all hope; they are living hopelessly. They are living simply because they are cowards and cannot commit suicide. [....]

Sannyas is choosing your life and also choosing your death. Sannyas means becoming decisive, conscious, deliberate. [....]

The way of sannyas is the way of tremendous hope, trust. Life is basically good, beautiful, divine, so if we are missing then something is wrong with us, not with life itself. Life is so beautiful that it makes even death beautiful.

Sannyas is not a way of doing anything, it is a way of being. It changes your inner world and, of course, your outer world changes with it, but that is secondary. It changes your center, it changes your awareness, and then your behavior, your actions. Whatsoever you do has a new quality to it, a grace that descends from the beyond — a song said or unsaid, sung or unsung, but it is there within your heart, a dance, the quality of dance to your feet….

Hence, I say it is a crazy way of living, but that’s the only way to live life rightly. A poetic way, the way of the lover — but only love knows. Logic is blind, love has eyes. Only love can see the ultimate truth that surrounds you within and without.

-Osho, “Come, Come, Yet Again Come, #4, Q2”

 Love plus awareness is equal to sannyas 

This is the whole process of sannyas. Only two things to be remembered, love and awareness. Love plus awareness is equal to sannyas.

Religions in the past have lived in a very uncreative style. The very orientation of the religions has been uncreative, escapist, life-negative. That's why so many centuries have passed and man is still irreligious (laughter). There are two kinds of irreligious people, those who are honestly irreligious and say so, and those who are not honest enough and go on pretending that they are religious but are not.

It is very rare to come across a person who is religious. In the temples, in the mosques, in the churches, in the synagogues, you will find phony people, pretending to be religious -- they are not. But it is not their fault. They have been conditioned in a wrong way, and each generation goes on conditioning the new generation. That becomes almost a heritage. All the diseases of the older generation become part of the mind of the new generation. This heritage has to be disowned -- only then one becomes a sannyasin.

One has to disown the whole past. One has to learn a totally new style of religiousness. To me life-affirmation, blissfulness, creativity -- these are very fundamental, the very roots of an authentic religious consciousness. And then life certainly becomes a song, a celebration.

The old saints lock so sad and so serious, so dull, so dead, that I would like my people to get rid of all those saints. It is better to be with a sinner who knows how to laugh than to be with a saint who has forgotten how to laugh.

It is better to be an ordinary person but capable of singing and dancing and loving and sharing, than to become closed into a very subtle ego of holier-than-thou.

My sannyasins have to be blissful and they have to create their life in such a way that slowly slowly it starts having the flavour of music, the rhythm of a song, the harmony of a dance. And it is possible It is our birthright. We have been denied and we have been taught wrong things which are functioning like hindrances. They can be immediately removed -- one need not wait for tomorrow. It is only a question of clarity.

-Osho,  “The Old Pond… Plop, #10”

 Earnestness, sincerity, authenticity 

 - these are the foundations of sannyas. 

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.

-Osho, “If You Choose To Be With Me, You Must Risk Finding Yourself, #3”

 I stand for absolute freedom, individuality 

Question :

Do you have any message for us in this new beginning?

Just remember one thing: the sannyas movement has entered a critical stage. It is a good sign; it will bring maturity, strength, togetherness.

What is to be remembered is that this strength, this togetherness does not become an organization. It remains the movement of individuals who are together because their experience is similar. They are not part of a religion, they are not a church; their individuality is absolutely intact….

Because that is one of the most difficult things: in times of difficulty one tends to become organized because that way you can fight better, you can oppose the enemy better. But my emphasis is that in opposing the enemy you create a bigger enemy within yourself: the organization, the church, the religion. The whole thing is defeated.

So remain continuously aware and make your readers remember in different ways in different times, that my message is for the individual, and I stand for absolute freedom, individuality. If we are together and if we are fighting together our aim is to fight for individuality and freedom. We are not going to become unconsciously a church, an organization.

That has happened to all the religions in the past. It was a calamity. Avoid the calamity.

- Osho, “Light on the Path, #3”

 Each of my Sannyasins is individual 

[The visitor replies: I think they are; the sannyasins want to be copies of you.]

That is their misunderstanding. If somebody wants to…. But I am continuously throwing them to themselves. And you need not be that way! Even if others are making the mistake you need not: you need not try to become a copy of me. Think about yourself. Why should you be worried about others? If they are going to hell, let them go. You can go to heaven! You can be a first-hand sannyasin.

Why be worried about others? These are just tricks of the mind, strategies of the mind to keep you in control. There is no need to be a copy, at least not here. Each of my sannyasins is individual; that’s my message to them. If somebody persists, insists, on being foolish, then it is his decision. But I am not helping anybody to become anybody else’s copy.

In fact that is not possible. Each individual is so unique. If you become a copy, you can become a copy only on the surface; deep inside you remain yourself. You can never be somebody else. Think about it, mm? And my feeling is that you are going to become a sannyasin from the head first. Feeling will take a long time, maybe lives. But if you become a sannyasin feeling may start flowing; that may be the beginning.

These things are so interrelated, just like the egg and the hen. You bring an egg: it can become the hen; you bring the hen, it can give you an egg. They go that way, parallel.

Good: if it can happen from the heart it will change your head. If it happens from your head, it will start entering and filtering into the heart. But think! Whenever you feel, mm? Good!

- Osho, "The Open Door, #2"

 All my sannyasins are rebels 

One who is not a rebel will not come close to me. The very fact that he comes close to me, becomes an initiate, is proof enough that he is a rebel. All my sannyasins are rebels; no other kind of people can be my sannyasins. Those who are not rebels are going to be against me, because whatever I am saying goes against the whole past of mankind — all its traditions, cultures, civilizations, religions.

Unless one is ready to disconnect himself from the past and the shadows of the dead, he cannot become a sannyasin; because my sannyas has no past, it has only future. It has no connections with the past, it is discontinuous with all that is old and dead. Its only concern is for the future growth of your being, your consciousness, your whole individuality.

That’s exactly the meaning of being a rebel: to live according to your own light, howsoever small, and find your way in the unknown future. Give all the opportunities, accept all the challenges of the unknown fearlessly, as if you are the first people on the earth.

The past is a burden, and if you are attached to the past you cannot move a single inch. You are burdened with a mountain, your potentiality is going to be crushed. That has been happening for centuries — people are living so burdened, so conditioned, that there is no possibility for them to be themselves. They are Christians, they are Hindus, they are Mohammedans, but they are not themselves.

My sannyasin does not belong to any ideology, to any philosophy, to any theology. He is pure of all that is rotten, he is pure of all that has passed; his eyes are fixed on the future. And he is seeking and searching his own growth without any fear of the crowd, the masses — which don’t have any individuality of their own. They are sheep, a crowd of sheep. My sannyasin is a rebel. He comes out of the crowd, stands alone like a lion, finds himself — his path, his dignity, his freedom.

- Osho, “The Rebel, #13, Q1”

 My message to my sannyasins is: be unique, be individuals 

My whole approach is individualistic. And my message to my sannyasins is: be unique, be individuals. Live your life the way you feel to live it… be rebels! There is no need to be too ready to fit into any mould. If you choose and if it is your joy it is perfectly good, otherwise there is no need… For no other reason, for no other motive should one fit into anything. If one feels this is the thing that one would like to be, then it’s okay. Then it is no more a slavery; it is freedom.

If you choose even hell out of freedom, you will be happy there, and if you are forced into heaven without your choice, without your will, then you will be unhappy there. So hell and heaven are not places; they are certain spaces within. When one accepts something, welcomes something of one’s own accord, heaven arises. One may remain a beggar, but if one has chosen that, then there is joy. One may become a millionaire and if one has not chosen it of one’s own accord, has been pulled, forced, manipulated, pushed… the parents, the wife, the children; the society, the priests, the politicians – a thousand and one manipulators are there… if one has been pulled like a puppet, one can have all the riches the world can give and one will be unhappy, one will be in hell. So from this moment assert your uniqueness, your individuality, your bliss. Nothing is lacking, all is already there. Good!

-Osho, “The No Book (No Buddha, No Teaching, No Discipline)”

 My sannyas is not a discipline. 

- My sannyas is freedom, freedom from all control -

Question :

What I mean by Sannyas is a spiritual discipline so that one becomes a Religious person, but it is not happening to me. What to do?

My sannyas is not a discipline. My sannyas is freedom, freedom from all control – even from self-control. A controlled man is a dead man. Whether you are controlled by others or by yourself does not make much difference.

My sannyas is spontaneity, living moment to moment without any prefabricated discipline, living with the unknown, not exactly knowing where you are going. Because if you know already where you are going you are dead. Then life runs in a mechanical way. A life should be a flow from the known towards the unknown. One should be dying each moment to the known so the unknown can penetrate you. And only the unknown liberates.

Discipline can never be of the unknown. Discipline has to be of the mind. The mind is your past. All that you have learned, all that you have been conditioned for, all that you have experienced, all that you have thought about – this is your mind. Out of this mind comes a planning for the future. That planning for the future will be nothing but a repetition of the past. It comes out of the past; it cannot be anything else.

Maybe a little modified here and there, decorated here and there, but there will be no radical revolution in it. My sannyas is a radical revolution. By giving you sannyas, I give you freedom. I give you courage to live without any planning, to live without mind, to live without past. Of course it is dangerous, but life is dangerous. Only when you are dead, then there is no danger. Then you are safe – safe in your grave.

Safety never exists before that. If you want to be safe and secure and perfectly protected, insured against all dangers, then don’t enter into sannyas. Enter into your grave. Then don’t breathe, because breathing is dangerous. One day breathing is going to bring death to you. Breathing is dangerous.

Life exists in danger, pulsates in danger. Life exists in the ocean of death. It has to be dangerous; it cannot be safe and secure. You are not a rock. You are a flower, you are fragile – in the morning, laughing with the sun; by the evening, you are gone. How can life be secure? In its frailty, in its fragileness, how can you even conceive of insurance? No, there is no insurance, there cannot be.

And one should not live by the philosophy the insurance companies go on propagating. One should live with the danger, with death hand in hand. Then tremendous dimensions open before you. Then God is revealed. God is very dangerous. There exists no other dangerous word comparable to God. God means to live a life of spontaneity, of nature. Don’t try to corrupt your future. Let it be. Don’t try to corrupt it, don’t try to manage it. Don’t give it a mold and a form and a pattern.

Of course, if you live the way I teach, many things will disappear from your life. The first thing will be the security – and it is a false thing. Only the false disappears with sannyas, not the real. The real starts appearing. The security will disappear. The marriage will disappear. Love will remain; love is real.

Let it be more clear: love can exist with sannyas, but not marriage, because marriage is an effort to give a pattern to love, to give a discipline to love, to give it a legal, social form. But what are you doing? How can you manage that which has not come yet? You can love a woman or a man, and you can feel in this moment that you will love her always and always, but this is just a feeling of this moment.

How can you promise? An authentic man will never promise. How can you promise for the future? How can you say really you will be able to love tomorrow too? If love disappears what will you do? And it appeared on its own accord, you have not brought it in, so when it disappears what will-you do? It comes and goes; it happens and disappears. It is not within your power; it is bigger than you.

So when you say, ”I will love you tomorrow too,” what are you going to do? If love disappears you will pretend, you will substitute. That’s what happens in a marriage. Then two dead persons living in a dead relationship go on quarreling, fighting, nagging each other, trying to dominate, manipulate, exploit, destroy. Marriage is an ugly thing. Love is tremendously beautiful.

My sannyas is like love. The older sannyas was. more like marriage. My sannyas is simply a courage to face whatsoever is going to happen, without any rehearsal for it. How can you prepare? The tomorrow is not known at all. Whatsoever you prepare is going to hinder; it will become a screen on your eyes and you will not be able to see what is. All preparation is dangerous. Remain unprepared.

Then you will be excited, then each moment will be a joy and a wonder, and each moment will bring something new to you which has never happened, and you will never be bored. The life of marriage, the life of all discipline, is the life of boredom – monotonous.

Monogamy is monotony. You have to repeat the same. You are not free to explore new ways of being. You are not Let it be more clear: love can exist with sannyas, but not marriage, because marriage is an effort to give a pattern to love, to give a discipline to love, to give it a legal, social form. But what are you doing? How can you manage that which has not come yet? You can love a woman or a man, and you can feel in this moment that you will love her always and always, but this is just a feeling of this moment.

How can you promise? An authentic man will never promise. How can you promise for the future? How can you say really you will be able to love tomorrow too? If love disappears what will you do? And it appeared on its own accord, you have not brought it in, so when it disappears what will-you do? It comes and goes; it happens and disappears. It is not within your power; it is bigger than you.

So when you say, ”I will love you tomorrow too,” what are you going to do? If love disappears you will pretend, you will substitute. That’s what happens in a marriage. Then two dead persons living in a dead relationship go on quarreling, fighting, nagging each other, trying to dominate, manipulate, exploit, destroy. Marriage is an ugly thing. Love is tremendously beautiful.

My sannyas is like love. The older sannyas was. more like marriage. My sannyas is simply a courage to face whatsoever is going to happen, without any rehearsal for it.

- Osho, “Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language, #2”

 The Nine Qualities of a Sannyasin 

1. An openness to experience.

2. Existential living.

3. A trust in one's own organism.

4. A sense of freedom.

5. Creativity.

6. A sense of humor, laughter, playfulness, nonserious sincerity.

7. Meditativeness, aloneness, mystical peak experiences

that happen when you are alone, when you are absolutely alone inside yourself.

8. Love, relatedness, relationship.

9. Transcendence, Tao, no ego, no-mind, nobodiness, nothingness, in tune with the whole.

Question 1:

Osho, 

What are the qualities of a sannyasin?

It is very difficult to define a sannyasin, and more so if you are going to define my sannyasins.

Sannyas is basically a rebellion about all structures, hence the difficulty to define. Sannyas is a way of living life unstructuredly. Sannyas is to have a character which is characterless. By 'characterless' I mean you don't depend anymore on the past. Character means the past, the way you have lived in the past, the way you have become habituated to living - all your habits and conditionings and beliefs and your experiences - that's what your character is. A sannyasin is one who no longer lives in the past or through the past; who lives in the moment, hence, is unpredictable.

A man of character is predictable; a sannyasin is unpredictable because a sannyasin is freedom. A sannyasin is not only free, he is freedom. It is living rebellion. But still, I will try:

a few hints can be given, not exact definitions, a few indications, fingers pointing to the moon.

Don't get caught with the fingers. The fingers don't define the moon, they only indicate. The fingers have nothing to do with the moon. They may be long, they may be short, they may be artistic, they may be ugly, they may be white, they may be black, they may be healthy, they may be ill - that doesn't matter. They simply indicate. Forget the finger and look at the moon.

What I am going to give is not a definition; that is not possible in this case. And, in fact, definition is never possible about anything that is alive. Definition is possible only about something which is dead, which grows no more, which blooms no more, which has no more possibility, potentiality, which is exhausted and spent. Then definition is possible. You can define a dead man, you cannot define an alive man.

Life basically means that the new is still possible.

So these are not definitions. The old sannyasin has a definition, very clearcut; that's why he is dead. I call my sannyas 'neo-sannyas' for this particular reason: my sannyas is an opening, a journey, a dance, a love affair with the unknown, a romance with existence itself, in search of an orgasmic relationship with the whole. And everything else has failed in the world. Everything that was defined, that was clearcut, that was logical, has failed. Religions have failed, politics have failed, ideologies have failed - and they were very clearcut. They were blueprints for the future of man. They have all failed. All programs have failed.

Sannyas is not a program anymore. It is exploration, not a program. When you become a sannyasin I initiate you into freedom, and into nothing else. It is great responsibility to be free, because then you have nothing to lean upon. Except your own inner being, your own consciousness, you have nothing as a prop, as a support. I take all your props and supports away; I leave you alone, I leave you utterly alone. In that aloneness... the flower of sannyas.

That aloneness blooms on its own accord into the flower of sannyas.

Sannyas is characterlessness. It has no morality; it is not immoral, it is amoral. Or, it has a higher morality that never comes from the outside but comes from within. It does not allow any imposition from the outside, because all impositions from the outside convert you into serfs, into slaves. And my effort is to give you dignity, glory. My effort here is to give you splendor.

All other efforts have failed. It was inevitable, because the failure was built-in. They were all structure-oriented, and every kind of structure becomes heavy on the heart of man, sooner or later. Every structure becomes a prison, and one day or other you have to rebel against it.

Have you not observed it down through history? - each revolution in its own turn becomes repressive. In Russia it happened, in China it happened. After every revolution, the revolutionary becomes antirevolutionary. Once he comes into power he has his own structure to impose upon the society. And once he starts imposing his structure, slavery changes into a new kind of slavery, but never into freedom. All revolutions have failed.

This is not revolution, this is rebellion. Revolution is social, collective; rebellion is individual. We are not interested in giving any structure to the society. Enough of the structures! Let all structures go. We want individuals in the world - moving freely, moving consciously, of course. And their responsibility comes through their own consciousness. They behave rightly not because they are trying to follow certain commandments; they behave rightly, they behave accurately, because they care.

Do you know, this word accurate comes from care. The word accurate in its root means to care about. When you care about something you are accurate. If you care about somebody, you are accurate in your relationship.

A sannyasin is one who cares about himself, and naturally cares about everybody else - because you cannot be happy alone. You can only be happy in a happy world, in a happy climate. If everybody is crying and weeping and is in misery, it is very, very difficult for you to be happy. So one who cares about happiness - about his own happiness - becomes careful about everybody else's happiness, because happiness happens only in a happy climate. But this care is not because of any dogma. It is there because you love, and the first love, naturally, is the love for yourself. Then other loves follow.

Other efforts have failed because they were mind-oriented. They were based in the thinking process, they were conclusions of the mind. Sannyas is not a conclusion of the mind.

Sannyas is not thought-oriented; it has no roots in thinking. Sannyas is insightfulness; it is meditation, not mind. It is rooted in joy, not in thought. It is rooted in celebration, not in thinking. It is rooted in that awareness where thoughts are not found. It is not a choice: it is not a choice between two thoughts, it is the dropping of all thoughts. It is living out of nothingness.

THEREFORE, O SARIPUTRA, FORM IS NOTHINGNESS, NOTHINGNESS IS FORM.

Sannyas is what we were talking about the other day - svaha, alleluia! It is joy in being.

Now how can you define joy in being? It cannot be defined, because each one's joy in being is going to be different. My joy in being is going to be different from your joy in being.

The joy will be the same, the taste of it will be the same, but the flowering is going to be different. A lotus flowers, a rose flowers, a marigold flowers - they all flower, and the process of flowering is the same. But the marigold flowers in his own way, and the rose in his, and the lotus in his. Their colors are different, their expressions are different, although the spirit is the same. And when they bloom, and when they can whisper to the winds, and when they can share their fragrance with the sky, they are all joyous.

Each sannyasin will be a totally unique person. I am not interested in the society. I am not interested in the collectivity. My interest is absolutely in individuals - in you!

And meditation can succeed where mind has failed, because meditation is a radical revolution in your being - not the revolution that changes the government, not the revolution that changes the economy, but the revolution that changes your consciousness, that transforms you from the noosphere to the christosphere, that changes you from a sleepy person into an awakened soul. And when you are awakened, all that you do is good.

That's my definition of 'good' and 'virtue': the action of an awakened person is virtue, and the action of an unawakened person is sin. There is no other definition of sin and virtue. It depends on the person - his consciousness, his quality that he brings to the act. So sometimes it can happen that the same act may be virtuous and the same act may be sinful. The acts may apparently be the same, but the people behind the acts can be different.

For example, Jesus entered into the temple of Jerusalem with a whip in his hand to throw out the moneychangers. He upset their moneychanging boards. Alone, singlehandedly, he threw all the moneychangers out of the temple. It looks very violent - Jesus with a whip, throwing people out of the temple. But he was not violent. Lenin doing the same thing will be violent, and the act will be sinful. Jesus doing the same act is virtuous. He is acting out of love; he cares. He cares about these moneychangers too! It is out of his care, concern, love, awareness, that he is acting. He is acting drastically because only that will give them a shock and will create a situation in which some change is possible.

The act can be the same, but if a person is awake the quality of the act changes.

A sannyasin is a person who lives more and more in alertness. And the more there are people who exist through awareness, the better the world that will be created. Civilization has not yet happened.

It is said that somebody asked the Prince of Wales, "What do you think about civilization?" And the Prince of Wales is reported to have said, "It is a good idea. Somebody is needed to try it. It has not happened yet."

Sannyas is just a beginning, a seed of a totally different kind of world where people are free to be themselves, where people are not constrained, crippled, paralyzed, where people are not repressed, made to feel guilty, where joy is accepted, where cheerfulness is the rule, where seriousness has disappeared, where a nonserious sincerity, a playfulness has entered. These can be the indications, the fingers pointing to the moon.

First: an openness to experience. People are ordinarily closed; they are not open to experience. Before they experience anything they already have prejudices about it. They don't want to experiment, they don't want to explore. This is sheer stupidity!

A man comes and wants to meditate, and if I tell him to go and dance, he says, "What will be the outcome of dancing? How can meditation come out of dancing?" I ask him, "Have you ever danced?" He says, "No, never." Now this is a closed mind. An open mind will say, "Okay. I will go into it and see. Maybe through dancing it can happen." He will have an open mind to go into it, with no prejudice. This man who says, "How can meditation happen out of dance?" - even if he is persuaded to go into meditation, he will carry this idea in his head:

"How can meditation happen out of dance?" And it is not going to happen to him. And when it does not happen, his old prejudice will be strengthened more. And it has not happened because of the prejudice.

This is the vicious circle of the closed mind. He comes full of ideas, he comes readymade.

He is not available to new facts, and the world is continuously bombarded with new facts. The world goes on changing and the closed mind remains stuck in the past. And the world goes on changing, and every moment something new descends into the world. God goes on painting the world anew again and again and again, and you go on carrying your old, dead ideologies in your heads.

So the first quality of a sannyasin is an openness to experience. He will not decide before he has experienced. He will never decide before he has experienced. He will not have any belief systems. He will not say, "This is so because Buddha says it." He will not say, "This is so because it is written in the Vedas." He will say, "I am ready to go into it and see whether it is so or not."

Buddha's departing message to his disciples was this: "Remember"... and this he was repeating for his whole life, again and again; the last message also was this - "Remember, don't believe in anything because I have said it. Never believe anything unless you have experienced it."

A sannyasin will not carry many beliefs; in fact, none. He will carry only his own experiences. And the beauty of experience is that the experience is always open, because further exploration is possible. And belief is always closed; it comes to a full point. Belief is always finished. Experience is never finished, it remains unfinished. While you are living how can your experience be finished? Your experience is growing, it is changing, it is moving. It is continuously moving from the known into the unknown and from the unknown into the unknowable. And remember, experience has a beauty because it is unfinished. Some of the greatest songs are those which are unfinished. Some of the greatest books are those which are unfinished. Some of the greatest music is that which unfinished. The unfinished has a beauty.

I have heard a Zen parable:

A king went to a Zen master to learn gardening. The master taught him for three years, and the king had a beautiful, big garden - thousands of gardeners were employed there - and whatsoever the master would say, the king would go and experiment in his garden. After three years the garden was absolutely ready, and the king invited the master to come and see the garden. The king was very nervous too, because the master was strict: "Will he appreciate?" - this was going to be a kind of examination - "Will he say, 'Yes, you have understood me'?"

And every care was taken. The garden was so beautifully complete; nothing was missing.

Only then did the king bring the master to see. But the master was sad from the very beginning. He looked around, he moved in the garden from this side to that, he became more and more serious. The king became very frightened. He had never seen him so serious: "Why does he look so sad? Is there something so wrong?"

And again and again the master was nodding his head, and saying inside "No."

And the king asked, "What is the matter, sir? What is wrong? Why don't you tell me? You are becoming so serious and sad, and you nod your head in negation. Why? What is wrong? I don't see anything wrong? This is what you have been telling me, and I have practiced it in this garden."

The master said, "It is so finished that it is dead. It is so complete - that's why I am nodding my head and I am saying no. It has to remain unfinished. Where are the dead leaves?

Where are the dry leaves? I don't see a single dry leaf!" All the dry leaves were removed - on the paths there were no dry leaves; in the trees there were no dry leaves, no old leaves which had become yellow. "Where are those leaves?"

And the king said, "I have told my gardeners to remove everything. Make it as absolute as possible."

And the master said, "That's why it looks so dull, so manmade. God's things are never finished." And the master rushed out, outside the garden. All the dry leaves were heaped: he brought a few dry leaves in a bucket, threw them to the winds, and the wind took them and started playing with the dry leaves, and they started moving on the paths. He was delighted, and he said, "Look, how alive it looks!" And sound had entered with the dry leaves - the music of the dry leaves, the wind playing with the dry leaves. Now the garden had a whisper; otherwise it was dull and dead like a cemetery. That silence was not alive.

I love this story. The master said, "It is so complete, that's why it is wrong."

Just the other night Savita was here. She was telling me that she is writing a novel, and she is very puzzled about what to do. It has come to a point where it can be finished, but the possibility is that it can be lengthened; it is not yet complete. I told her, "You finish it. Finish it while it is unfinished - then it has something mysterious around it - that unfinishedness...

And I told her, "If your main character still wants to do something, let him become a sannyasin. And then things are beyond your capacity. Then what can you do? Then it comes to a finish, and yet things go on growing."

No story can be beautiful if it is utterly finished. It will be utterly dead. Experience always remains open - that means unfinished. Belief is always complete and finished. The first quality is an openness to experience.

Mind is all your beliefs collected together. Openness means no-mind; openness means you put your mind aside and you are ready to look into life again and again in a new way, not with the old eyes. The mind gives you the old eyes, it gives you again ideas: "Look through this."

But then the thing becomes colored; then you don't look at it, then you project an idea upon it.

Then the truth becomes a screen on which you go on projecting. Look through no-mind, look through nothingness - shunyata. When you look through no-mind your perception is efficient, because then you see that which is. And truth liberates. Everything else creates a bondage, only truth liberates.

In those moments of no-mind, truth starts filtering into you like light. The more you enjoy this light, this truth, the more you become capable and courageous to drop your mind. Sooner or later a day comes when you look and you don't have any mind. You are not looking for anything, you are simply looking. Your look is pure. In that moment you become avalokita, one who looks with pure eyes. That is one of the names of Buddha - Avalokita: he looks with no ideas, he simply looks.

Once it happened that a man spat on Buddha's face. He wiped his face and asked the man, "Have you anything more to say?"

His disciples were very much shocked and angry. His chief disciple, Ananda, said to him, "This is too much! We cannot do anything because you are here; otherwise we would have killed this man. This man has spat on you, and you are asking, 'Have you anything more to say?'" Buddha said, "Yes, because this is a way of saying something - spitting. Maybe the man is so angry that words are not adequate; that's why he has spat." When words are not adequate, what do you do? You smile, you cry, tears come, you hug, you slap - you do something. If there is too much anger what will you do? You cannot find a sufficiently strong, violent word.

What will you do? - you spit.

Now this is Buddha's vision - without mind. He looks into the man: "What is the matter?

Why is he spitting on me?" He's not involved in it at all. He does not bring his past experiences or ideas that spitting is bad, that this is insulting and humiliating. No idea interferes. He simply looks into the reality of this man who is spitting on him. He's utterly concerned: "Why? This man must be in trouble, a linguistic trouble. He wants to say something but he does not have the right words to do it. Hence, awkwardly, he is spitting."

Buddha said, "That's why I'm asking if you have anything more to say?" The man himself was shocked because this was not his expectation. He had come to humiliate Buddha, but Buddha is not humiliated. Buddha's compassion is showering on the man. He could not sleep that night. Again and again he thought about it. It was so difficult for him to absorb it: "What kind of man is this? What manner of man is this? I spit, and he simply asks - and with tremendous love - 'Have you anything more to say?'" In the early morning he went back, fell at Buddha's feet and said, "Sir, excuse me, forgive me. I could not sleep the whole night."

And Buddha laughed, and he said, "You fool! Why? I slept perfectly well. Why should you get so disturbed about such a small thing? It has not hurt me. You see my face is as it was before. Why did you get so worried?"

And the man said, "I have come to become your disciple. Initiate me. I want to be with you. I have seen something unique, superhuman. But first, forgive me."

And Buddha said, "This is nonsense. How can I forgive you? - because I have not even taken any note of it. I was not angry, so how can I forgive you?" Twenty-four hours had passed, and they were sitting on the bank of the Ganges. And Buddha said, "Look at how much water has passed down the Ganges in twenty-four hours: that much life has passed in you, that much life has passed in me. It is no longer the same Ganges. I am not the same man.

In fact, you had never spat on me, it was somebody else; twenty-four hours have passed. And you are not the same man who had spat... so who can forgive whom? Let the gone be gone."

This is the vision of no-mind. It can work miracles. The sannyasin lives in openness to everything.

The second quality is existential living. He does not live out of ideas: that one should be like this, one should be like that, one should behave in this way, one should not behave in this way. He does not live out of ideas, he is responsive to existence. He responds with his total heart, whatsoever is the case. His being is here-now. Spontaneity, simplicity, naturalness - these are his qualities.

He does not live a readymade life. He does not carry maps - how to live, how not to live.

He allows life; wherever it leads he goes with it. A sannyasin is not a swimmer, and he does not try to go upstream. He goes with the whole, he flows with the stream. He flows so totally with the stream that by and by he is no longer separate from the stream, he becomes the stream. That's what Buddha calls srotapanna - one who has entered the stream. That is the beginning of Buddha's sannyas too - one who has entered the stream, one who has come to relax in existence. He does not carry valuations, he's not judgmental.

Existential living means each moment has to decide on its own. Life is atomic! You don't decide beforehand, you don't rehearse, you don't prepare how to live. Each moment comes, brings a situation; you are there to respond to it - you respond. Ordinarily people live a very strange kind of life. If you are going to give an interview, you prepare, you think what is going to be asked and how you are going to answer it, how you are going to sit and how you are going to stand. Everything becomes phony because it is rehearsed. And then what happens?

When you go with such a rehearsal, you are never totally there. Something is being asked and you are searching in your memory, because you are carrying a prepared answer - whether that will suit with it or not, whether this will do or not. You go on missing the point. You are not totally there; you cannot be totally there, you are involved in the memory. And then the next thing happens: when you are coming out then you start thinking you should have answered this way. This is called 'the staircase wit': when you are coming down the staircase, and you start thinking, "I should have answered this, I should have said this." You become very wise again. Before you are wise, after you are wise; in the middle you are otherwise! And in the middle is life. Existence is there.

The third quality of a sannyasin is a trust in one's own organism. People trust others, the sannyasin trusts his own organism. Body, mind, soul, all are included. If he feels like loving he flows in love. If he does not feel like loving he says "Sorry" - but he never pretends.

A non-sannyasin goes on pretending. His life is a life lived through masks. He comes home, he hugs the wife, and he does not want to hug the woman. And he says, "I love you," and those words sound so phony because they are not coming from the heart. They are coming from Dale Carnegie. He has been reading 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' and that kind of nonsense. And he is full of that nonsense, and he carries it and he practices it. His whole life becomes a false, pseudo life, a parody. And he is never satisfied, naturally; he cannot be, because satisfaction comes only out of authentic living. If you are not feeling loving you have to say so; there is no need to pretend. If you are feeling angry you have to say so. You have to be true to your organism, you have to trust your organism. And you will be surprised: the more you trust, the more the organism's wisdom becomes very, very clear to you.

Your body has its own wisdom - it carries the wisdom of the centuries in its cells. Your body is feeling hungry and you are on a fast, because your religion says that this day you have to fast - and your body is feeling hungry. You don't trust your organism, you trust a dead scripture, because in some book somebody has written that this day you have to go on a fast, so you go on a fast. Listen to your body. Yes, there are days when the body says, "Go on a fast!" - then go. But there is no need to listen to the scriptures. The man who wrote that scripture has not written it with you in his mind, not at all. He could not have conceived of you. You were not present to him, he was not writing about you. It is as if you fall ill and you go to a dead doctor's house and look into his prescriptions, and find a prescription and start following the prescription. That prescription was made for somebody else, for some other disease, in some other situation.

Remember to trust your own organism. When you feel that the body is saying don't eat, stop immediately. When the body is saying eat, then don't bother whether the scriptures say to fast or not. If your body says eat three times a day, perfectly good. If it says eat one time a day, perfectly good. Start learning how to listen to your body, because it is your body. You are in it; you have to respect it, and you have to trust it. It is your temple; it is sacrilegious to impose things on your body. For no other motive should anything be imposed! And this will not only teach you trust in your body, this will teach you, by and by, a trust in existence too - because your body is part of existence. Then your trust will grow, and you will trust the trees and the stars and the moon and the sun and the oceans: you will trust people. But the beginning of the trust has to be trust in your own organism. Trust your heart.

Now somebody has asked a question: he has decided to live with his wife because he thinks that to live with one's wife and never leave her, never separate, and never make love to another woman, is a great spiritual quality.

Maybe for some, maybe not so for others. It depends.

Now the questioner says, "I have decided this, and problems are there. I feel attracted to other women: I feel guilty. And I don't feel attracted towards my wife - then too I feel guilty. I don't want to make love to my wife because the desire does not arise. But I have to make love to my wife to satisfy her. If I make love to her, then I feel guilty about myself, that I am being untrue to myself. And it looks like a dragging affair."

When you don't want to make love, then love is the ugliest thing in the world. Only the most beautiful can be the most ugly. Love is one of the most beautiful experiences, but only when you are flowing in it, when it is spontaneous, when it is passionate, when you are full of it, overpowered by it, possessed by it, drunk with it, absorbed in it - only then. Then it takes you to the highest peak of joy. But if you are not possessed in it, and you are not even feeling any love for your wife or your husband, and you are making it... then the English expression is right: making love. Then you are making it, it is not happening. It is ugly, it is prostitution. To whom you are doing it is not the point; it is prostitution. It is criminal. And this is not going to make you in any way spiritual. You will only become sexually repressed, that's all. If you make love you will feel guilty, if you don't make love you will feel guilty.

Now this man has an idea of how a husband and wife should be. Now the wife must be suffering also. Both are hooked, both are bored with each other, both want to get rid of each other but cannot get rid of each other because they don't trust their organism. If your organisms are saying, "Be together, grow together, flow together"; if your organism is feeling happy and thrilled and excited and there is ecstasy, go with the woman one life, two lives, three lives, as many lives as you want be together, and you will be coming closer and closer to God. And your intimacy will have a quality of spirituality.

But not this kind of intimacy. A forced intimacy will make you more and more unspiritual, and your mind will start, naturally, seeking some ways: your mind will become more and more obsessed with sex. And when too much obsession is there, how can you grow in spirituality?

Listen to the organism, and be courageous enough to do that which your organism says.

And I'm not saying to separate from your wife. But if that has to come, that has to come. And it will be good for you both. At least that much you owe to your wife. If you care at all about the wife, and you don't love her anymore, then you have to say so. In deep sadness... the parting will be sad, but what can be done? You are helpless. You will not part in anger, you will not part with a grudge and complaint. You will part with immense helplessness in your heart. You wanted to be with her, but your organism is saying no. What can you do? You can force your organism, and the organism can go there, and go on continuing in the relationship, but there will be no joy. And without joy how can you be in relationship? Then the marriage is false; legal, but otherwise false.

A sannyasin is one who trusts in his own organism, and that trust helps him to relax into his being, and helps him to relax into the totality of existence. It brings a general acceptance of oneself and others. It gives a kind of rootedness, centering. And then there is great strength and power, because you are centered in your own body, in your own being. You have roots in the soil. Otherwise you see people uprooted, like trees that have been pulled up from the soil.

They are simply dying, they are not living. That's why there is not much joy in life. You don't see the quality of laughter; the celebration is missing. And even if people celebrate that too is false.

For example, it is the birthday of Krishna and people celebrate. How can you celebrate Krishna's birthday? You have not even celebrated your own birthday. And somebody who was born five thousand years ago - how are you concerned with that, and how can you celebrate it? It is all phony. How can you celebrate Jesus Christ's birthday? It is impossible. You have not celebrated the God that has come to you, that is inside you. How can you celebrate some other God who was born in a stable two thousand years ago?

In your very body, in your very being, this very moment, God is there - and you have not celebrated it. You cannot celebrate. Celebration has to happen first in your own home, at close quarters. Then it becomes a great tidal wave and spreads all over existence.

The fourth is a sense of freedom.

The sannyasin is not only free, he is freedom. He always lives in a free way. Freedom does not mean licentiousness. Licentiousness is not freedom, licentiousness is just a reaction against slavery; so you move to the other extreme. Freedom is not the other extreme, it is not reaction. Freedom is an insight: "I have to be free, if I have to be at all. There is no other way to be. If I am too possessed by the church, by Hinduism, by Christianity by Mohammedanism, then I cannot be. Then they will go on creating boundaries around me. They go on forcing me into myself like a crippled being. I have to be free. I have to take this risk of being free. I have to take this danger."

Freedom is not very convenient, is not very comfortable. It is risky. A sannyasin takes that risk. It does not mean that he goes on fighting with each and everybody. It does not mean that when the law says keep to the right or keep to the left, he goes against it, no. He does not bother about trivia. If the law says keep to the left, he keeps to the left - because it is not a slavery. But about important, essential things... If the father says, "Get married to this woman because she is rich and much money will be coming," he will say, "No. How can I marry a woman when I am not in love with her? This will be disrespectful to the woman." If the father says, "Go to the church every Sunday because you are born in a Christian home," he will say, "I will go to the church if I feel, I will not go because you say." Birth is accidental; it does not matter much. The church is very essential... "If I feel like it, I will go."

I'm not saying don't go to church, but go only when your feeling has arisen for it. Then there will be a communion. Otherwise, no need to go.

About essential things the sannyasin will always keep his freedom intact. And because he respects freedom, he will respect others' freedom too. He will never interfere with anybody's freedom, whosoever that other is. If your wife has fallen in love with somebody you feel hurt, you will cry tears of sadness, but that is your problem. You will not interfere with her. You will not say, "Stop it, because I am suffering!" You will say, "This is your freedom. If I suffer, that is my problem. I have to tackle it, I have to face it. If I feel jealous, I have to get rid of my jealousy. But you go on your own. Although it hurts me, although I would have liked that you had not gone with anybody, that is my problem. I cannot trespass your freedom."

Love respects so much that it gives freedom. And if love is not giving freedom it is not love, it is something else.

A sannyasin is immensely respectful about his own freedom, very careful about his own freedom, and so is he about other's freedom too. This sense of freedom gives him an individuality; he is not just a part of the mass mind. He has a certain uniqueness - his way of life, his style, his climate, his individuality. He exists in his own way, he loves his own song.

He has a sense of identity: he knows who he is, he goes on deepening his feeling for who he is, and he never compromises.

Independence, rebellion - remember, not revolution but rebellion - that is the quality of a sannyasin. And there is a great difference. Revolution is not very revolutionary. Revolution also goes on functioning in the same structure.

For example, in India, for centuries the untouchables, the lowest caste, have not been allowed in temples. The brahmins have never allowed them to enter into the temple: "The temple will become dirty if they come in." For centuries in India the untouchables have not gone into the temple. This is ugly. Then came Mahatma Gandhi - he tried hard, he struggled hard. He wanted the untouchables to be allowed into the temples; his whole life was a struggle for it. It is revolutionary but not rebellious. Why revolutionary? Then what is rebellion?

Somebody asked J. Krishnamurti about Gandhi's struggle for the untouchables to be permitted into the temples. And do you know what J. Krishnamurti said? He said, "But God is not in the temples." This is rebellion.

Gandhi's approach is revolutionary, but he also believes that God is in the temples as much as the brahmins do. The structure is the same. He believes it is very, very important for people to go into temples; if they don't go into the temples they will miss God. That is the idea of the brahmin, that is the idea of the society that has repressed the untouchables from entering, prohibited them from entering. The idea is the same: that God lives in the temples, and those who are going to get into the temples will come close to God, of course. And those who are not allowed, they will miss. Gandhi is revolutionary, but revolution believes in the same structure. It is a reaction.

J. Krishnamurti is rebellious. He says, "But God is not in the temples, so why bother?

Neither are brahmins getting it there, nor will the untouchables get it. Why bother? It is stupid." All revolutions are reactionary, reactions to a certain pattern. Whenever you react it is not much of a revolution because you believe in the same pattern. Of course you go against it, but you believe. The deep down substratum is the same.

Gandhi is thinking that brahmins are enjoying very much; they are getting God too much.

And the untouchables? - they are deprived. But he has not looked at the brahmins: down the centuries they have been worshipping in the temples and they have got nothing. Now this is foolish! Those who are inside the temple have got nothing, so why bother? And why bring people in who are not inside? It makes no sense.

A sannyasin is rebellious. By rebellion I mean his vision is utterly different. He does not function in the same logic, in the same structure, in the same pattern. He is not against the pattern - because if you are against a certain pattern you will have to create another pattern to fight with it. And patterns are all alike. A sannyasin is one who has simply slipped out. He's not against the pattern, he has understood the stupidity of all patterns. He has looked into the foolishness of all patterns and he has slipped out. He is rebellious.

The fifth is creativity. The old sannyas was very uncreative. It was thought that somebody becomes a sannyasin and goes to a Himalayan cave and sits there, and that was perfectly alright. Nothing more was needed. You can go and see the Jaina monks: they are sitting in their temples, doing nothing - absolutely uncreative, dull and stupid looking, with no flame of intelligence at all. And people are worshipping and touching their feet. Ask, "Why are you touching the feet?" and they say, "This man has renounced the world" - as if renouncing the world is in itself a value. "What has he done?" and they will say, "He has fasted. He fasts for months together" - as if not eating is a value in itself.

But ask what he has painted, what beauty he has created in the world, what poem he has composed, what song he has brought into existence, what music, what dance, what invention - what is his creation? - and they will say, "What are you talking about? He is a sannyasin!"

He simply sits in the temple and allows people to touch his feet, that's all. And there are so many people sitting like this in India.

My conception of a sannyasin is that his energy will be creative, that he will bring a little more beauty into the world, that he will bring a little more joy into the world, that he will find new ways to get into dance, singing, music, that he will bring some beautiful poems. He will create something, he will not be uncreative. The days of uncreative sannyas are over. The new sannyasin can exist only if he is creative.

He should contribute something. Remaining uncreative is almost a sin, because you exist and you don't contribute. You eat, you occupy space, and you don't contribute anything. My sannyasins have to be creators. And when you are in deep creativity you are close to God.

That's what prayer really is, that's what meditation is. God is the creator, and if you are not creators you will be far away from God. God knows only one language, the language of creativity. That's why when you compose music, when you are utterly lost in it, something of the divine starts filtering out of your being. That is the joy of creativity, that's the ecstasy - svaha!

The sixth is a sense of humor, laughter, playfulness, nonserious sincerity. The old sannyas was unlaughing, dead, dull. The new sannyasin has to bring more and more laughter to his being. He has to be a laughing sannyasin, because your laughter is your relaxation, and your laughter can create situations for others also to relax. The temple should be full of joy and laughter and dance. It should not be like a Christian church. The church looks so cemetery-like. And with the cross there it seems to be almost a worship of death... a little morbid. You cannot laugh in a church. A belly-laughter would not be allowed; people will think you are crazy or something. When people enter into a church they become serious, stiff... long faces.

To me, laughter is a religious quality, very essential. It has to be part of the inner world of a sannyasin: a sense of humor.

The seventh is meditativeness, aloneness, mystical peak experiences that happen when you are alone, when you are absolutely alone inside yourself.

Sannyas makes you alone; not lonely, but alone; not solitary, but it gives you a solitude.

You can be happy alone, you are no longer dependent on others. You can sit alone in your room and you can be utterly happy. There is no need to go to a club, there is no need to always have friends around you, there is no need to go to a movie. You can close your eyes and you can fall into inner blissfulness: that's what meditativeness is all about.

And the eighth is love, relatedness, relationship. Remember, you can relate only when you have learned how to be alone, never before it. Only two individuals can relate. Only two freedoms can come close and embrace each other. Only two nothingnesses can penetrate into each other and melt into each other. If you are not capable of being alone, your relationship is false. It is just a trick to avoid your loneliness, nothing else.

And that's what millions of people are doing. Their love is nothing but their incapacity to be alone. So they move with somebody, they hold hands, they pretend that they love, but deep down the only problem is that they cannot be alone. So they need somebody to hang around, they need somebody to hold onto, they need somebody to lean upon. And the other is also using them in the same way, because the other can also not be alone, is incapable. He or she also finds you instrumental as a help to escape from himself.

So two persons that you say are in love are more or less in hate with themselves. And because of that hate, they are escaping. The other helps them to escape, so they become dependent on the other, they become addicted to the other. You cannot live without your wife, you cannot live without your husband because you are addicted. But a sannyasin is one...

That's why I say the seventh quality is aloneness, and the eighth quality is love-relationship.

And these are the two possibilities: you can be happy alone and you can be happy together too. These are two kinds of ecstasies possible for humanity. You can move into samadhi when alone and you can move into samadhi when together with somebody, in deep love. And there are two kinds of people: the extroverts will find it easier to have their peak through the other, and the introverts will find it easier to have their greatest peak while alone. But the other is not antagonistic; they can both move together. One will be bigger, and that will be the decisive factor in whether you are an introvert or an extrovert. The path of Buddha is the path of the introvert; it talks only about meditation. The path of Christ is extrovert; it talks about love.

My sannyasin has to be a synthesis of both. An emphasis will be there: somebody will be emphatically more in tune with himself than with others, and somebody will be just the opposite - more in tune with somebody else. But there is no need to get hooked into one kind of experience. Both experiences can remain available.

And the ninth is transcendence, Tao, no ego, no-mind, nobodiness, nothingness, in tune with the whole.

That is the whole message of Prajnaparamita Sutra, the Heart Sutra: gate gate paragate - gone, gone, gone beyond - parasamgate bodhi svaha - gone altogether beyond. What ecstasy!

Alleluia!

Transcendence is the last and the highest quality of a sannyasin.

But these are only indications, these are not definitions. Take them in a very liquid way.

Don't start taking what I have said in a rigid way... very liquid, in a vague kind of vision, in a twilight vision - not like when there is a full sun in the sky. Then things are very defined. In a twilight, when the sun has gone down and the night has not yet descended, it is both, just in the middle, the interval. Take whatsoever I have said to you in that kind of way. Remain liquid, flowing. Never create any rigidity around you. Never become definable.

- Osho, "The Heart Sutra, #10, Q1"

※ I understand that sannyas is simply moving toward meditation. It is not an organization or a religion. I do understand that I remain free and responsible for my own life and my actions.

If you are such a seeker, Are you ready? Enjoy...