Osho Quotes on Sannyas

1. A sannyasin simply means: who has agreed to meditate.
2. You have become a sannyasin. Now it is a responsibility on you to fulfill the commitment of sannyas — and that is meditation. Without meditation there is no sannyas. It is only your pure consciousness rising upwards — slowly, slowly moving beyond the gravitation of lower things — that will make you a sannyasin. I can define sannyas as a flying experience to the stars.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. Sannyasin is a totally different thing. It has nothing to do with Rajneeshism. Sannyas simply means they have accepted a way of meditation and a life of joy and rejoicing.
7. That’s my insistence too: that a sannyasin should not renounce the world. Your meditation SHOULD grow in the world. It should be part of the day-to-day existence. You should not become an escapist.

Osho Quotes on Sannyas

1. Man needs a healthier religion, a religion which really helps people to laugh, to love, to live; and that’s my effort are — to create dancing sannyasins. The old sannyas was that of renunciation: my sannyas is that of rejoicing. Rejoice and rejoice and rejoice. If you can rejoice wholeheartedly, you have prayed, you have meditated. You are accepted by god only when you are in a dance.
2. Initiation into sannyas means that now you will look at your life with different eyes, with a different perspective. Each moment is tremendously valuable. It has not to be killed but lived; it has not to be destroyed but loved. And the more deeply you love the moment, the more deeply you go into it, the more is the possibility of having contact with eternity, because eternity penetrates time each moment; it is just behind the moment. If you go deeply into it, time disappears and eternity reveals itself.
3. The only hope for man is to start looking into the ways of the heart. A great change, a shift, from intellect to intuition, from logic to love, is needed. To be initiated into sannyas means to be initiated out of the world of logic into the world of love.
4. Becoming a sannyasin means that you are making yourself available to changing this pattern. Sannyas is a gesture that ‘I am ready to do something to change my old gestalt’, that ‘I will not resist the change’, that ‘I will not fight the change’, that ‘I am willing, even if it is painful’ — because if your neck has become stiff then it will take a little time and it will be painful too. But it is tremendously paying.
5. The mind goes on playing these games and if you are too attached to your mind sooner or later sannyas will have to go: you can choose either sannyas or your mind. If you want to cling to the mind it is only a question of time; sooner or later the mind will convince you. Because sannyas is against the mind, it is a fatal blow to the very roots of the mind, so the mind tries to subvert, to sabotage it.
6. We never look into our own being, we never use the potential; we remain the seeds. The seeds contain millions of flowers, but it all depends on you. Initiation into sannyas is initiation into this awareness of ‘I contain much more than I am aware of. Whatsoever I am is only the superficial part of whatsoever I can be.’ We are less than we can be. We are only parts of that whole which we can be.
7. I teach only one thing: awareness, consciousness, witnessing; they are different names for the same key. I don’t teach conscience. Conscience is the old way, the way of the hypocrite. So remember this, that only one thing is really virtuous, and that is becoming as aware as you can manage. Put your total energy into awareness. Then it goes on growing. It is a never-ending process, it is an eternal pilgrimage. Let sannyas be the first step towards it.
8. Divine happiness is that happiness which comes but never goes. It is not of time, it is part of eternity. And when you are really happy, not in a momentary way, the blessing has happened. Now one can feel the blessing of being alive, and because of that feeling one can bless the whole existence too. Let sannyas become a search for divine happiness and blessing. Sannyas is nothing else but that search.
9. The whole purpose of my work: to help you to become utterly empty so that god can have some space in you, otherwise so much rubbish, so much unnecessary furniture, is there that there is no space left. My whole work consists of creating a space in you –  that’s what sannyas is all about — and once that space is ready you need not do anything else. That very space is enough to pull the divine into you, that very space becomes a magnetic, gravitational force….
10. There are only two ways in life: one that goes outwards in search of happiness and the other that goes inwards in search of bliss. To be a sannyasin means that now you will be searching for bliss instead of happiness, that now you will turn inwards. Sannyas is a decision to move into one’s own being, to see one’s own inner sources. It is a conversion, a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. It is trying to face oneself, trying to know ‘Who am I?’ The moment you look into your own being a great surprise is waiting for you. There is great joy waiting for you just to turn in and tune in. It is yours, and then no-one can take it, even death cannot take it away from you. It is eternal.
11. That is the basic message of sannyas: to live life without any idea of purpose, meaning, profit, to just live it for the sheer joy of living it, loving it for the sheer joy of loving it. It is life for life’s sake: no goal, no purpose, no destination. Great freedom happens. When you are free of the obsession for meaning, you are really freedom.
12. Sannyas is a process of going beyond unconsciousness. It is the alchemy of transforming the unconscious into consciousness, of transforming darkness into light, of transforming death into eternal life.
13. Being initiated into sannyas means you are moving into a totally different world. It is as if one has lived in the desert and suddenly one has found a small oasis. The oasis has different laws. The world of sannyas is an oasis. Its fundamental law is love.
14. This is what sannyas is all about. Nothing else has to be changed: only something in the inner world, the inner approach, the inner light. The whole world remains the same. I don’t teach renunciation, that you have to leave this and that. You live the same life, you live in the same life, you live in the same world, but if you bring awareness to your acts your world is transformed. It is not the same world, although it is the same.
15. Sannyas is only a gesture from your side that you are available to go inwards, that you are ready to learn the art, that you are ready to take the risk. It is going into the unknown, so it is risky, but ultimately tremendously paying.

Osho Sannyas Quotes

1. I don’t teach you renouncing the world. I teach you rejoicing in the world. This is an absolutely new method, a new definition of sannyas: not renunciation, but rejoicing, and still remaining beyond everything that surrounds you. This is your true spiritual birth.
2. Unless you know how to turn the worst into the best, you are not aware of the real essence of sannyas.
3. Sannyas is nothing but risking the known for the unknown, risking the false for the real. But you don’t know the real; you know only the false. And the trouble is, unless you drop the false you will not be able to see the real.
4. Sannyas is a revolt against all societies and all cultures and all civilizations, for the simple reason that they are against the individual. I am absolutely for the individual.
5. That’s the meaning of sannyas: a simple gesture on your part that you are available — nothing else. Just a simple gesture that you are no more resisting me, that you will not fight with me; that you are not going to waste the time in fighting; that you drop all defense measures. That is the meaning of sannyas — that you are getting ready for satsang, that now I can shower on you and you will be ready to receive. It simply shows a receptivity.
6. My sannyas is a way of rejoicing, not a way of renunciation
7. Sannyas is all about: becoming your own master. That is the meaning of the word ‘swami’: to become a master of one’s own, to be a light unto oneself. And there arises a different kind of order — real order. Buddha lives in that order and you can see the grace. He lives according to his own light. He has his own way, his own authentic individuality. He is a free man — but remember, a free man is going to be in constant conflict because a free man has to be in rebellion. That is the price one has to pay.
8. That is the meaning of sannyas, that is what sannyas is all about: freedom. But freedom has nothing to do with outer changes, freedom has something to do with inner understanding. And this is the basis of freedom: that I am responsible. Responsibility brings freedom. Throwing responsibility on others keeps you a slave.
9. Sannyas means you have become interested in the moon. Sannyas means you have become interested in attaining the impossible. Sannyas means now you are entering into a journey for the unknown shore. It is dangerous, but through this danger one is reborn. Through this impossible longing — passion for the impossible — something integrates in you.
10. Sannyas means love for the moon. That very love transforms. It is not a question of whether you reach to the moon or not: that very love transmutes, that very love becomes the alchemy. You are no more part of the ordinary world, you start living in an extraordinary world. The poetry is born in you, the music is heard of the unknown, some dance starts happening. That’s what God is all about. Sannyas is an invitation for God to become a guest in your being. Sannyas is readiness to be a host for God.
11. In fact, except for the stupid people nobody has illusions of certainty. The more intelligent you are, the more uncertain you are. The more intelligent you are, the more hesitant — because life is vast. Life is immense, immeasurable, mysterious. How can you be certain? Living in uncertainty, living in insecurity, is simplicity. And that’s what I mean by sannyas: a life of insecurity, a life without ideals, without character, a life not rooted in the past, not motivated by the future; a life utterly herenow.
12. Sannyas is a jump, a quantum leap. It is not that “tomorrow” you will take sannyas. A moment arrives when the decision takes grip of your heart. Not that you have pondered over it in a very syllogistic way, logically, rationally, thought about what will happen and what will not happen, and what are the benefits and what are the harms, and what are the problems that you will have to face. Sannyas is not a calculated step. If it is, then you are thinking of the future, and it has nothing to do with sannyas. Sannyas is a meditative jump, not a calculated step.
13. Sannyas is rebellion — rebellion through understanding.
14. Become mad like Buddha, Bahaudin, Mohammed, Christ. Become mad like me. And that madness has immense beauty, because all that is beautiful is born out of that madness, and all that is poetic flows out of that madness. The greatest experiences of life, the greatest ecstasies of life, are born out of that madness. Initiating you into sannyas, I am really initiating you into that kind of madness. This place belongs to mad people.
15. In India I am one of the most misunderstood men. They think I am teaching people indulgence. I am teaching renunciation. They think I am teaching a worldly kind of sannyas. They don’t understand. I am teaching REAL sannyas, because real sannyas arises only out of worldly experience. Real sannyas is not possible in a cave in the Himalayas. It will be unreal, imposed, and deep down you will remain worldly and you will continue to hanker and dream of the world. Live in the world. Really live in it so you get tired, wearied, finished with it — so much so that one day suddenly it loses all meaning for you, and the renunciation has happened. To me, the real renunciation happens in the market-place and ONLY in the market-place.

Osho Quotes on Sannyas

1. Sannyas should be available to everybody. The whole country must be able to become sannyasins, but that is possible only if you can be a sannyasin in ordinary life — if you can go to the office, if you can work in a shop, if you can be a laborer, or a teacher, or a doctor, or an engineer and still be a sannyasin.
2. Sannyas is something which can be received only in deep innocence.
3. My sannyas is not a character that will confine you. My sannyas is an awareness that will give you more and more freedom. And if one day you feel that my sannyas is making a prison for you, then drop out of it — that will be the true sannyas spirit. But never allow it to become an imprisonment.
4. My sannyasins belong to no race, to no country, to no religion. That’s what my sannyas is all about: getting out of all kinds of prisons, becoming simply human; declaring one’s universality, declaring that “The whole earth belongs to us.”
5. This is my observation: that true sannyas happens only when you have come to the verge of suicide. When you see that the outside world is finished, then there are only two alternatives left: either commit suicide and be finished because there is nothing to live for any more, or turn in. “The outer world has failed, now let us try the inner”: that is sannyas. Sannyas and suicide are two aspects of the same coin. If you are focused and obsessed with the outside, then suicide; if you are a little loose, flexible, then sannyas.
6. Sannyas is nothing but an effort to wake you, an effort to shake you, an effort to shock you into awareness. Sannyas is nothing but an alarm.
7. The reality is already there, you are not to achieve it. You have only to do one thing: you have to put aside your dreams. And you will no longer be a rock, you can fly with me to the very end of the sky. Receive my invitation, receive my challenge. That’s what sannyas is all about.
8. The phony sannyas is escapist. It teaches you not to enjoy ,life, it teaches you not to love music, it teaches you not to cherish beauty. It teaches you to destroy all the sources that beautify your existence. It teaches you to escape to the caves, ugly caves, to turn your back towards the world that God has given as a gift to you.
9. The sannyas that teaches indifference is phony. The sannyas that teaches you how to live in the world and yet float above it like a lotus flower, like a lotus leaf, remaining in the water and yet untouched by the water, remaining in the world and yet not allowing the world to enter into you, being in the world yet not being OF the world, that is true renunciation. That true renunciation comes through witnessing; it is not indifference.
10. Sannyas is real suicide, because it destroys the mind, it takes you beyond the mind. And if you are beyond the mind you will not be born again. Why be born again and again? Why go on in this vicious circle?
11. I persuade you, I seduce you into sannyas. Great persuasion is needed, great seduction is needed. And that’s why I have created sannyas. Otherwise there was no need; you could have come here, listened to me, and gone. You would have listened to me, but you would not have come close to me. This is a bridge. You would have heard me, but you would not have tasted of my silence. You would have known what I say about love, but you would not have known my love. Sannyas makes it possible. It is an energy-field, it is a buddhafield. It is communion: nonverbal, heart-to-heart, and, one day, being-to-being.
12. Sannyas is going to undo all that the society has done. It is not just accidental that priests are against me, politicians are against me, parents are against me, the whole establishment is against me; it is not accidental. I can understand the absolutely clear logic of it. I am trying to undo what they have done. I am sabotaging the whole pattern of this slave society. My effort is to create rebels, and the beginning of the rebel is to trust in oneself. If I can help you to trust in yourself, I have helped you. Nothing else is needed, everything else follows of its own accord.
13. Sannyas is an effort to reclaim that which is yours and to drop that which is not yours. Sannyas is an effort to drop that which you really don’t have, and to claim that which you always had with you all along.
14. Sannyas is not renunciation, it is a way to live life in its totality and intensity. It is the art of living life in all its dimensions, it is the way to live life in all its richness. It is not the old idea of sannyas. I am not creating monks and nuns — no, not at all. I am creating alive people, vibrant, pulsating, zestful people, young and fresh, ready to go on any adventure in search of truth, in search of love, in search of God.
15. Sannyas is not denied to anybody, because sannyas is an opportunity. A few people surrender even before taking sannyas, a few surrender after taking sannyas, a few surrender after being sannyasins for months or for years. Hence sannyas is not denied; it creates a space, a context, for surrender.
16. Sannyas I give to all. But only those are accepted who REALLY take sannyas. That’s why I say sannyasins are the chosen few. It is out of my compassion that I don’t reject anybody. The most unworthy is also to be respected, loved, received, welcomed. And who knows? The unworthy may change. Man is unpredictable; the baser metal can any day become gold.
17. Sannyas is an ultimate love affair: the search for God, the search for truth. It is possible only when you have failed many times, loved and suffered, and each suffering has brought you more and more consciousness, more and more understanding. One day the recognition arrives that love can give you a few glimpses — and those glimpses are good, and those glimpses are glimpses of God — but it can only give you glimpses; more than that is not possible. But that too is too much; but without those glimpses you will never seek and search God.
18. 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.
19. 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.
20. Sannyas is a risk! The people who cannot take any risk cannot be sannyasins.
21. Sannyas is not something outward, it is something that arises in you, an urge, a deep longing.
22. Sannyas is not a trip. It is an understanding in which you drop all the trips, in which you say,’Now I have arrived. Finished. Now I am not going anywhere. Now there is no future and no desire to go anywhere. Now I have to come to terms with the present, now I will be living in the herenow.’
23. Sannyas will make you more free, not less. Sannyas is not a sort of slavery, it is freedom — freedom from the formalities of the society, freedom from the oppressive burdens of the others, freedom to be yourself. Sannyas is an effort to become an individual. My help is available here but it is only your decision which will change you. Even if you take my help, it is you who takes it. I am like a river flowing — it is your decision to drink out of me or not. It is absolutely yours, and let it be so.
24. My sannyas is not dropping out of the world but getting deeper into it, getting to the very core of it, because God is at the very core of the world. God is the soul of the world. You cannot find him by escaping from the world. You can find him only by going deeper and deeper into the world. When you reach the very center of existence, you will find him. He is hidden in the world, the whole world is permeated by him. He is in the trees and in the rocks and in the birds and in the people. Yes, he is in your wife, in your husband and in your children. He is in you! And the best possibility to find him is in the world, not out of the world.
25. Sannyas is nothing but a decision, a total decision, a commitment, an involvement, that “Now my whole energy is going to move into one direction — the direction of freedom; I have decided to be free, free from all desire and free from all sorrow. Freedom without bounds is my goal.” And it can be attained. Once the decision is there and you are pouring your energy into it and nourishing it, nobody can prevent you from attaining it. It is your birthright.