What happens when one embraces sannyas despite community rejection?

Osho, I do want to take sannyas, but I am very frightened of the world. If I take sannyas, will I be able to withstand the whirlwinds that will rise around me or not? Please reassure me.

Sannyas means: stepping into insecurity. Sannyas means: placing your feet in the unknown. Sannyas means: leaving the known, falling in love with the unknowable. How can I reassure you? The whirlwind will arise. My reassurance would be a lie. I can only say this much: the whirlwind is certain to arise—it should arise. If it does not, how will sannyas ripen? If there is no sun, no heat, how will the fruit ripen? If no wind blows, no storm arises, the trees will lose their spine. Only by bearing the gusts of storm and gale does a tree grow sturdy. The whirlwind will arise. I can assure you of at least this much: be absolutely certain, don’t worry in the least—the whirlwind will arise. And it will be far greater than you imagine. Nor will it be that it comes today and is gone tomorrow. As long as you live,…

Osho, the people of my caste and community have abandoned me. They even convened a council, and four men together beat me. “Give up sannyas, the hair, the beard, and the ochre”—saying this, they beat me—these so-called Brahmins and pundits. Neither could I understand them, nor could they understand me. Osho, why did this happen? Why have my own become strangers?

Understand me. When, for the first time, sannyasins left their homes and families, they were beaten. Now it has become accepted, and there is no substance in it. So I told you: do not leave; remain in the marketplace. Meditate there, live there. I have again created a hurdle for tradition. The goal is the same. The one who left also stepped off the rut; but now even leaving has become a rut. We are breaking the rut of leaving as well. The renouncer had one convenience: he withdrew from society. Then he came only occasionally—once in two, four, or ten years—so society was not much disturbed. He would stay a day or two—there was even a rule for a sannyasin not to stay more than three days in one place—and then move on. He did not disturb the flow of life. Now my sannyasin will plant his feet and…

Sannyas is a concentrated effort to use this opportunity to live

So if you have to suffer as a sannyasin, don't blame me! (laughter) It's natural. Accept it with no complaint, no grudge, with deep thankfulness, because that is how the crowd recognizes you: it says, 'Yes, now we recognize you, that you are on the right path.' The moment that the crowd starts torturing you, starts going against you... That's its way of declaring that, 'Now this man is coming closer to the truth,' -- very close to the truth that they don't want to see. But it is beautiful to suffer on the way towards god, far more beautiful than to be happy in the world of lies. It is better to suffer and sacrifice on the way towards god because each suffering will create integrity in you, each suffering will bring a blessing in disguise. It is passing through fire -- and it is only through such fires…

Osho, I would very much like to take sannyas but it will be totally ruinous for my career as orange clothes will not be accepted at my place of work. Is there any alternative to this?

Shirish Ghurye, remember only one thing: if you really want to do something, do it. If you don't want to do it, don't do it, but be clear. Don't be a hotch-potch, don't be a mess. When you really want to be a painter, become a painter then, whatsoever the risk. Yes, you will not be able to become a prime minister by becoming a painter. You will not be very respectable in the society, because your paintings are not useful to the society in any way. They are not utilitarian. And the greater they are, the less utilitarian they will be. The more original they are, the less they will be understood and sold. But if you want to be a painter, be a painter -- even if that means remaining poor, even if that means remaining starved, even if that means that you will be dying earlier. Suffer,…

Sannyas is a quantum leap, a jump into the unknown, a great courage to become discontinuous with your own past. It is a rebirth. It is a change so great... as if the old dies, and dies utterly and totally and the new comes into being from nowhere, from nothingness, out of nothing. If the new comes from the old it remains the old. If the new is continuous with the old then it is only a modification of the old -- maybe a little bit colored and decorated and changed, with a new dress, with a new mask, but it is not a revolution, it is not a conversion. And sannyas to be true has to be a revolution so total that the old identity is simply dropped -- just as the snake slips out of the old skin and never looks back.