Osho - My sannyasin has to be a song of bliss. My sannyasin is not entering into a sad, monastic life; on the contrary he is entering into a life of rejoincing. God is not against life so there is no need to renounce life to attain God; in fact to renounce life is to renounce God forever. Those who renounce life will never find God anywhere because he is always here and now. He is in the thick of life, in its colors, in its days and in its nights.

God is nothing but the name of the totality, that which is. Renouncing life is going against God. Renouncing life will make you more egoistic. The ego is always sad: it has a long face, it is very serious. It is never joyful, it has no sense of humor. It cannot laugh, it cannot dance, it cannot sing, it cannot love, it cannot live. It is suicidal, it wants to die. Slowly slowly it commits suicide. That’s what has been done down the ages by the escapists who renounced life and went to the monasteries or into the caves. I am against renounciation. My sannyas is a tremendous love affair with life. So become a song of bliss, a dance of bliss, a celebration.

My sannyasin has to be a song of bliss. My sannyasin is not entering into a sad, monastic life; on thecontrary he is entering into a life of rejoincing. God is not against life so there is no need to renounce life toattain God; in fact to renounce life is to renounce God forever. Those who renounce life will never find Godanywhere because he is always here and now. He is in the thick of life, in its colors, in its days and in itsnights.God is nothing but the name of the totality, that which is.

Renouncing life is going against God.Renouncing life will make you more egoistic. The ego is always sad: it has a long face, it is very serious. Itis never joyful, it has no sense of humor. It cannot laugh, it cannot dance, it cannot sing, it cannot love, itcannot live. It is suicidal, it wants to die. Slowly slowly it commits suicide. That’s what has been done downthe ages by the escapists who renounced life and went to the monasteries or into the caves.I am against renounciation. Ma sannyas is a tremendous love affair with life. So become a song of bliss,a dance of bliss, a celebration.

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

Osho Quotes on Renunciation

1. There is no renunciation in a premature mind. Maturity is needed, and maturity means you have lived life, known it to the very depth, and found it lacking. There is nothing in it, the journey is complete; you can live in the market, or you can go to the monastery. It doesn’t matter, it is all the same. Life is no longer an attraction: wherever you are it makes no difference. This point is the point of suicide. And this point is the point of SANNYAS. Suicide or SANNYAS: this is the alternative. And, unless your SANNYAS is an alternative to suicide, it is not very significant.
2. Sannyas and meditation are enough, nothing more is needed. Sannyas changes your whole vision of reality. It helps you to drop all ritualistic religion, all serious religion. It helps you to become non-ritualistic, non-serious, it helps you to become playful, it helps you to take life as fun. It helps you to rejoice in existence, and through that rejoicing comes real renunciation.
3. In the past it has been said again and again by the priests that if you renounce you will attain to bliss. I tell you just the opposite: if you become blissful there is renunciation. And that renunciation has a beauty of its own — because in your rejoicing, all that is non-essential starts dropping away — because you can see it is non-essential. The very seeing is the transformation. If after seeing you have to do something for transformation, then your seeing was incomplete, was not entire, was not total, was not real.
4. Renounce knowledge! I teach you renunciation of knowledge. I don’t teach you renunciation of the world; that is stupid, foolish, meaningless! I teach you renunciation of knowledge.
5. Your world has to be dropped; that is the only renunciation I require of you. I don’t say leave your wife, I don’t say leave your job, I don’t say leave your money; leave your anything, no! I simply say leave your private worlds of dreams. That is sannyas for me. The old sannyas was leaving this world, the visible. One goes to the Himalayas, leaves the wife and children; that is not the point at all. That is not the world to leave. How can you leave it? Even the Himalayas belong to this world. The real world which has to be renounced is the mind, the private dreaming world. If you renounce it, sitting in the market you are in the Himalayas. If you don’t renounce it, in the Himalayas also you will create a private world around you.
6. How can you escape yourself? Wherever you go you will be with yourself. Wherever you go you will behave in the same way. Situations may be different but how can you be different? You will be asleep in the Himalayas. What difference does it make whether you sleep in Poona or you sleep in Boston or you sleep in London or in the Himalayas? Wherever you are you will be dreaming. Drop dreaming! Become more alert. Suddenly dreams disappear, and with dreams all miseries disappear.
7. India has been renouncing, and a religion that renounces is false. A religion that makes you capable of celebrating to the optimum is the true religion. And this is the beauty of it: if you live life, a renunciation comes automatically. It happens — that is the nature. If you eat well, satiety comes. If you drink well, the thirst disappears. If you lived well, the clinging to life disappears. It has to be so. This is the law, the logos. If you have not lived well, then you always remain clinging, then you always dream about how to live. And if you have renounced this life you have to project another life. You need a permanent self, otherwise what will you do? You missed this life, and there is no other life? You need a permanent self. You have to believe and console yourself: “Okay, the body dies but the self never dies.”
8. A false tradition of renunciation came into existence all over the world. Escape from the house and go to the monastery. Escape from the market, go to the Himalayas. Escape from the world! To the Himalayas you can go easily, but how can you escape from yourself? You will create the same world THERE — the same! It may be a miniature world, it may not be so vast, but you will do the same. YOU are the same — how can you do anything else?
9. It is good to be in the world: that is the message of the Upanishads. The Upanishadic seers were not ascetic. Of course they renounced many things, but the renunciation came not through effort, it came through understanding, it came through meditation. They renounced the ego because they saw that it is just a manufactured entity by the mind. It has no reality, no substance in it; it is pure shadow, and to waste your life with it is stupid. To say that they renounced is not right; it will be better to say that because they became so aware it withered away on its own accord. They became non-possessive. It is not that they did not possess things, but they became non-possessive. They USED things. They were not beggars. They lived joyously, enjoying everything that was available to them, but they were not possessive, they were not clingers. That is true renunciation: living in the world and yet remaining absolutely non-possessive. They loved, but they were not jealous. They loved totally but without any ego trip, without any idea to dominate the other.
10. The Upanishads are in tremendous love with life. They don’t teach renunciation, they teach rejoicing. They would have agreed with Jesus when Jesus says again and again to his disciples, “Rejoice! Rejoice! I say again to you rejoice!” The Upanishads have a very aesthetic approach towards life — not the approach of an ascetic but the approach of a poet, a painter, a musician, a dancer. Their approach is in no way pathological.
11. To be a sannyasin means now you take the decision to grow. And this is the last decision. Now you will have to struggle, now you will have insecurity, you will have dangers, and you will have to fight and face them moment to moment. This moment-to-moment fight and struggle, this fighting into the unknown, this fight for the unknown, this living in the unknown, is the real renunciation.
12. To decide to grow is a great renunciation — a renunciation of the security that is given to the seed, a renunciation of the wholeness that is given to the seed. But this security is at a very great cost. The seed is dead, it is only potentially living. It can live, or it can remain dead. Unless it grows, becomes a tree, it is dead. 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.
13. The moment you start renouncing, you start shrinking. Rather than growing, rather than becoming vaster and infinite, you start shrinking into yourself. You lose all interest in existence, in love, because you are told to torture yourself. Renunciation from the world is another name for self-torture. And a man who is torturing himself — how can you expect him to dance? How can you expect him to be ecstatic? He is committing a slow suicide.
14. I teach you love, not renunciation. I teach you celebration, not celibacy. I teach you to be natural, to be existential.
15. I am against renunciation. I want buddhas to be here in the world doing all kinds of things. It was unfortunate in the past that buddhas escaped from the world. If they had remained in the world, we would not have been so barbarious. More humanity and more culture and more consciousness would have been available to us.

Osho Quotes on Renunciation

1. Renunciation means: wherever you are, there is no need to renounce the things because in the first place you never possessed them. It is foolish to talk about renunciation. It means as if you were the possessor and now you are renouncing. How can you renounce something which you never possessed? Renunciation means coming to know that you cannot possess anything. You can use, at the most, but you cannot possess. You are not going to be here forever — how can you possess? It is impossible to possess anything. You can use and you can be grateful to things that they allow themselves to be used. You should be thankful to things that they allow themselves to be used. They become means, but you cannot possess them.
2. Dropping the idea of ownership is renunciation. Renunciation is not dropping the possessions but possessiveness. And this is what Gurdjieff calls getting unidentified. This is what Bauls call realizing ‘Ardhar Manush’ — the essential man. This is what Zen people call the original face.
3. Zen says escaping is not renunciation — that’s my message also.
4. Remember, if you renounce the world through a failure it is not renunciation, it is not sannyas, it is not true. If you renounce the world through understanding, that is totally different. You don’t renounce it as a sad effort, with frustration within, failure all around. You don’t do it like a suicide, remember. If your sannyas is a suicide, then flowers will not shower on you — then you are leaving….
5. Your monks and your munis and sadhus who are sitting in the temples and monasteries, in the Himalayan caves, are just escapists. Renounce! — but there is no need to escape. Renounce and still be here. Be in the world, but don’t be of the world. Remain in the crowd and remain alone. Do a thousand and one things — whatsoever is needed, do it — but never be the doer. Don’t gather the ego — that’s all.
6. I call a man a sannyasin who breaks out of these institutions and lives spontaneously. To be a sannyasin is the most courageous act possible. To be a sannyasin means to live without the mind, and the moment you live without mind you live without society. The mind has created society, and society has created the mind; they are interdependent. To be a sannyasin means to renounce all that is false but not to renounce the world, to renounce all that is unauthentic, to renounce all the answers, to be responsive, spontaneously responsive, and not to think about the reasons, but to be real.
7. When you are meditating, always remember that the periphery is not to be lost permanently. You have to come to the periphery again and again so the route remains clear and the path remains there. Hence my insistence to meditate but not to renounce the world. Meditate in the morning and then go to the market; meditate in the morning and then go to your office. Meditate and then make love! Don’t create any dichotomy, don’t create any conflict.
8. Remember: if you renounce mind and live life you are a true sannyasin; if you renounce life and live mind you are an untrue sannyasin, you are a pseudo-sannyasin. And remember well, to be pseudo is always easier; to be real is always difficult. To live with a wife and to be happy is really difficult; to live with children and to be blissful is really difficult. To work in a shop, in an office, in a factory and to be ecstatic is the real difficulty. To leave everything and just sit under a tree and feel happy is not difficult — anybody will feel that way. Nothing to do, you can be detached; everything to do, you become attached. But when you do everything AND remain unattached, when you move with the crowd, in the world and yet alone, then something real is happening.
9. I don’t mean become a beggar, and I don’t mean renounce the world. I mean be in the world but don’t be of the world. Don’t accumulate inside, be poor in spirit. Never possess anything — and then you are ready to die. Possessiveness is the problem, not life itself. The more you possess, the more you are afraid to lose. If you don’t possess anything, if your purity, if your spirit is uncontaminated by anything, if you are simply there alone, you can disappear any moment; whenever death knocks on the door it will find you ready. You are not losing anything. By going with death you are not a loser. You may be moving into a new experience.
10. The mind is very clever. If you say, ‘Drop money’ the mind says, ‘Okay. Can I cling to meditation?’ If you say to the mind, ‘Renounce the world’ the mind says, ‘Okay. Can I now possess spiritual experiences?’ If you say, ‘Renounce the world’ the mind says, ‘I can renounce the world, but now I will cling to the idea of God.’
11. Don’t indulge too much and don’t renounce too much. Don’t be only in the world and don’t escape out of it. Go on keeping a balance. When you feel that now you are falling into too much indulgence, lean towards renunciation, and when you feel that now you are going to become a renunciate, an ascetic, lean back again to indulgence. Keep in the middle.
12. Renunciation is not once and for all. You have to renounce every moment; whatsoever is gathered you have to renounce. Only then renunciation remains a revolution. And not only do you have to renounce ordinary things of the world, you have to renounce ordinary ideologies also — Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan. You have to renounce thoughts so that you can remain in a pure mirrorlike reflection. Then your consciousness can remain undisturbed, uncoloured by any thought, you can see into things directly and your consciousness is not distracted or distorted by any prejudice.
13. In India it happens many times, more often than not: people abandon their possessions, they renounce, but if you watch them you will see they have not abandoned their greed. In fact, they have renounced BECAUSE of the greed. I know one man who renounced almost a million rupees many years ago, but he still goes on talking about it. Thirty years have passed, and whenever I meet him, he will again and again bring the subject up that he has renounced a million rupees. And you can see the light that starts shining in his eyes — a million rupees!
14. You can renounce, but if you enjoy ego through it, if you feel that you are a great man of renunciation, a MAHATMA, a great soul because you have renounced, you are not an ordinary man, you are not worldly, then your renunciation is not true. When is the renunciation true? — when you understand the futility. Not out of greed, not because you have to earn something in the other world, but just seeing the futility of it all, you renounce. This renunciation has no effort in it, just a deep insight. Every morning you clean your house and throw the rubbish on the rubbish heap, but you don’t go declaring and advertising to the whole town that again you have renounced much rubbish, again this morning you have done a great deed of renunciation. No, you know that it is rubbish — finished. What is there to tell about it?