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?
Osho – 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.