Osho on Sannyasin – Never ask me how a sannyasin should be

Question – Osho, when i am working in the west i feel like an orange warrior, and i like it. When i am here i feel meditative, and i like it. Is the part of myself that still needs to fight an obstacle to becoming a good disciple?

Osho – Deva Majid, A SANNYASIN HAS TO BE LIQUID, FLOWING. He has not to be stonelike, fixated. He has to be like flowing water so he can take any form. Whatsoever is the need of the moment he responds accordingly — not according to any fixed pattern, not according to any A PRIORI idea of how a sannyasin should be. There is nothing like that in MY vision of sannyas.

Never ask me how a sannyasin should be, because that will become a pattern and you will act out of the pattern. And any action out of a patterned life is wrong. One has to be loose, relaxed, so that one can respond to the situation. And situations go on changing. In the West it is different; here it is different.

So when it is needed to be a warrior, be a warrior; and when it is needed to be meditative, be meditative. When it is needed to be an extrovert, be an extrovert; and when it is needed to be an introvert, be an introvert. This fluidity is sannyas. If you become fixated, then you are no more alive — you have become obsessed. Then you are an extrovert or an introvert, worldly or other-worldly, but you are no more my sannyasin.

My sannyasin is indescribable, as indescribable as God himself, as life itself, as love itself — as inexpressible as existence itself. A sannyasin is in total harmony with existence, so whatsoever the need of the moment, the sannyasin goes with the moment, flows with the river. He does not go upstream; he does not have any idea of how things should be. He has no “ought”; he has no commandments in his mind to be fulfilled, to be followed. This is true discipline: discipline that brings freedom, discipline that liberates.

Source – Osho Book “Ah This”