The qualities of a sannyasin

Beloved 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. […]

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! […]

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! […]

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 is unfinished. The unfinished has a beauty. […]

Experience always remains open – that means unfinished. Belief is always complete and finished. The first quality is an openness to experience. […]

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 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. […]

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. […]

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, Ch 10

Quote published in The Book: An Introduction to the Teachings of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
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