What are the consequences of sannyasins' behavior in social settings?

A friend has written to me: “Osho, some of your sannyasins behave indecorously at certain social places, bringing slander upon your name. For instance, the other day a sannyasin went forward to shake hands with a girl dancing on the stage, and people shouted: ‘Hey Rajneesh, get down!’ It feels very bad to me that your name should be spoiled by such acts. For a sannyasin who is engaged in the direction of awakening, how proper is such conduct?”

And why did you feel bad? Your ego must have been hurt: “But I am also a sannyasin! If people are abusing him, they are abusing me too,” because people see that you too are in ochre robes with a mala, another swami standing there. Your ego was bruised. Such are our vested interests. Mohan Bharati, habits don’t go because of vested interests. On Seth Chandulal’s grave his wife had a marble slab placed, on which was written: Rest in peace. Three days later, when his will was read and it turned out he hadn’t left even a single paisa in his wife’s name, the Sethani was furious. Enraged, she ran to the cemetery and had the stone inscribed further: Rest in peace—until I arrive. When vested interests are at work, it’s like saying, “Sleep peacefully for a few days—then I’ll come and give you such a taste you’ll remember…

Firstly, it is a long time that sannyas has remained isolated from the world, and consequently it has been doubly harmed. A sannyasin living completely cut off from the world, living in utter isolation from the world, becomes poor, and his poverty is very deep and subtle, because the wealth of all our life's experiences lies in the world, not outside. All our experiences of pain and pleasure, attachment and detachment, hate and love, enmity and friendship, war and peace, come from the world itself. So when a man breaks away from the world, he becomes a hothouse plant, he ceases to be a flower that blooms under the sun and the open sky. By now, sannyas has become a hothouse plant. And such a sannyas cannot live any longer. Sannyas cannot be grown in hothouses. To grow and blossom, the plant of sannyas needs an open sky.

Osho, I do not know by what grace of merit, by what thread of love from births upon births we have been bound to you, that your compassion and the blessed opportunity of your presence has been bestowed, that receiving sannyas from your sacred hands I am fulfilled. Our whole country is indebted to you. From every corner of the world people are coming here ceaselessly, every day—drowning in the ocean of love, drinking to the brim the streams of nectar that pour down. May the grapevine remain, from which the wine is made. May this clay remain, from which the wine-cup is formed. May these drinkers

I was a guest in a Christian friend’s home. I opened his Bible and found a dried rose. I said, “How apt!” He asked, “Why do you say apt?” I said, “Because as this rose is, so are the words of the Bible—dried roses. On Jesus’ lips those words were alive! Only on Jesus’ lips could they be alive; they are such words that can be alive only on the lips of one like Jesus, on no one else’s. On his lips they were like a rose upon a living bush—roots drinking the earth’s sap, leaves drinking sunlight, breezes passing and the bush breathing—and the rose blossoming. On Jesus’ lips, the words were like that—sun’s light within them, the earth’s sap within them, the breath of the winds within them. God throbbing inside them. You have done well to keep a dried rose in the Bible; it is the symbol…

Osho, sannyas was born in this land; it was granted the dignity of Gaurishankar (Everest). But today its honor has become merely superficial. Inside, the individual and society alike are afraid of it. Why have sannyas and the sannyasin lost their meaning? Please explain.

In my sannyas there is no prohibition—no “leave this, run from that.” Awakening is enough. Cowards run. Those who awaken remain where they are and are free there. My sannyas does not want to give you knowledge; it wants to give you meditation. Meditation means emptiness; it means: I do not know. Life is such an ultimate mystery that nothing definitive can be known about it. And I want to give sannyas a new posture—creativity. I will call him a sannyasin who sings a new song; who strikes a new music from the veena; who dances a new dance; who makes this world a little more beautiful, brings a little more blessedness to the earth. Then sannyas can regain its dignity. And I would have the sannyasin not imitate. Listen, understand, contemplate—but live from your own individuality. Therefore I give my sannyasins no codes of conduct—only processes to awaken the…

Osho, people are calling it a sham that, having surrendered myself at your feet, I have become unburdened and blissful. What should I say to them?

Hari Vedant! They are quite right. They have to say it. They are not saying anything about you; they are only defending themselves. If you are right, then they are wrong. Only if you are wrong can they protect their sense of being right. So do not be angry with them. Understand their feeling. They have become afraid of you, frightened of you. Your joy has become a danger to them, a challenge. If you are truly joyous, then they will have to change their lives. They too have been seeking joy and have not found it. They too have wanted to be so carefree and intoxicated, to dance, to sing songs of joy dropping all social restraints—whose heart has not desired that? But the life they have built has turned into a kind of hell. All the threads are tangled. Nothing makes sense. Then, suddenly, one day someone just…