According to Osho, neo-sannyas is sannyas without renunciation: a wholehearted yes to life, love, and even sex, embracing everything that raises awareness and brings you nearer to the divine. It rejects life-denial and avoids drugs or anything that dulls consciousness. Its compass is simple: include what makes you more alert and alive, drop what sedates and negates.
Live fully in the world—love, learn, and choose what makes you more awake—while skipping anything that makes you dull inside.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What is neo-sannyas all about?
Neo-sannyas is an effort to introduce the concept of 'sannyas without any renunciation of the world'. To me, India has given only one thing to the world, to human consciousness, and that is the concept of sannyas the concept of renunciation. But this renouncing can be one of two things. It can be of the world. Then it becomes negative: it becomes life-denying; it goes against life. To me that negative, life-denying aspect of sannyas is a disease. And because of that life-denying aspect, sannyas, religion, has suffered much. It couldn't become a major part of life, it couldn't become a part of human consciousness. The main current of it is life-denying. Neo-sannyas is a total yes to everything in life -- including everything that gives you higher consciousness, including everything that gives you a nearness to the divine, including everything that has been denied only because it was life-affirming.…
September 28, 1970 was a memorable day. At Manali in the Himalayas, Osho initiated His first group of sannyasins. This event was followed by this special evening discourse, on the significance of Neo Sannyas. To me, sannyas does not mean renunciation; it means a journey to joy bliss. To me, sannyas is not any kind of negation; it is a positive attainment. But up to now, the world over, sannyas has been seen in a very negative sense, in the sense of giving up, of renouncing. I, for one, see sannyas as something positive and affirmative, something to be achieved, to be treasured. It is true that when someone carrying base stones as his treasure comes upon a set of precious stones, he immediately drops the baser ones from his hands. He drops the baser stones only to make room for the newfound precious stones. It is not renunciation.
(On 26 September 1970 in Manali, Osho inaugurated “Neo‑Sannyas.” Some sixteen people received initiation into Neo‑Sannyas from him. On the night of 28 September 1970, in an additional meeting, Osho gave this special talk on Neo‑Sannyas.) For me, sannyas is not renunciation but rejoicing. Sannyas is not a prohibition, it is an attainment. Yet until now the earth has seen sannyas only in a negative sense—about giving up, about leaving, not about receiving. I see sannyas as receiving. Certainly, when someone finds diamonds and jewels they drop the pebbles. But dropping the pebbles simply means making room for the diamonds. We do not “renounce” pebbles; we renounce only what we value greatly. Pebbles are thrown out the way we throw trash out of the house—we don’t keep accounts of how much trash we have renounced. Up to now sannyas has kept accounts of what is dropped.
Beloved Osho, what is sannyas?
Sannyas is hope -- hope against all hope. People have lost all hope; they are living hopelessly. They are living simply because they are cowards and cannot commit suicide. The existentialist philosophers are right when they say that the most important philosophical problem is suicide: to live or not to live, to be or not to be. If this is life that ordinary people are living, then it does not seem to be worth living at all. What is the point of getting up every morning and going through the same empty gestures you have gone through thousands of times? The same breakfast, the same nagging wife, the same ugly husband; the same suspicions, the same possessiveness, the same jealousy, the same anger, the same ambition; rushing to the office, the same boss -- everything is the same, a constant repetition. And again coming back home and sitting in front…
To me, sannyas is not something very serious. Life itself is not very serious, and one who is serious is always dead. Life is just an overflowing energy without any purpose, so to me, sannyas is to lead life purposelessly. Live life as a play and not as a work. If you can take this whole life just as a play, you are a sannyasin; then you have renounced. Renunciation is not leaving the world, but changing the attitude. That is why I can initiate anyone into sannyas. To me, initiation itself is a play. And I will not ask for any qualifications -- whether you are qualified or not -- because qualifications are asked when something serious is done.