What is the definition of sannyas?

Beloved Osho, what is sannyas?

Sannyas is rebellion against all slavery; it is living life in absolute freedom. To live life in absolute freedom, without traditions, without conventions, without religions, without philosophies, without ideologies -- political, social, and others -- to live unburdened is sannyas. But it will look crazy to the whole world. Freedom looks crazy because everybody is living an imprisoned life. To prisoners, the person who escapes from the prison looks crazy, because for them prison is comfortable, convenient, secure, safe. A Hungarian secret police colonel was inspecting a strip of the border. "Too many people have been slipping across at this point," he informed the guards. "I have been ordered to test your security precautions." After deploying the guards at strategic points, the colonel began creeping on all fours toward the barbed wire. "Can you see me now?" he called out. When they cried back "Yes," he started again. On the…

You have often asked me: “What is sannyas, what is its definition?” These sutras will give you the definition.

Like a tusker swaying in intoxication, so, says Malukdas, the sannyasin sways all twenty-four hours. His inner dance goes on. I roam with two strings of breath as my lute. I drink the wine of love. I never tend the world’s concerns— Ask those who sing of the world; I sing the song of my own heart. I carry my heart’s utterance, my heart’s gift. This world is incomplete; it does not please me. I carry a world of dreams within. All efforts fail to know the Truth—has anyone known by effort? The clever end up where the naive began. Then why should the world not remain foolish, even after lessons? I am learning to forget learned knowledge. I roam in madmen’s garb, Drunk to the dregs. Hearing me, the world sways and surges; I carry the message of ecstasy. Because of so-called renouncers, a wrong image of the sannyasin…

Anand Nishanto. Anand means bliss; nishanto means the end of the night. Sannyas is the end of the night and the beginning of a new dawn. To live in the ego is to live in darkness. Sannyas means surrendering your ego, saying "I am no more," becoming a nobody, dropping all nonsense about being somebody. Sannyas is a declaration that, "I am nothing, I am anonymous..." Just as rivers are, mountains are, stars are, animals are, birds are, with no name, with no fame. To be a sannyasin means again becoming part of this infinite nature. Once you drop the ego, you become part of the whole. The ego keeps you separate, it keeps a boundary between you and the whole, a wall.

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.

Anand means bliss, sambodhi means the ultimate state of awareness -- bliss and awareness. They are two aspects of the same coin. Either become more blissful and you will find awareness growing, or become more aware and you will find bliss growing. The best way is to work on both together; they help each other. One brings the other, and then the other in its own turn helps. So whenever it is possible to be aware, be aware, and you will find more and more possibilities opening for being blissful. And whenever it is possible to be blissful, be blissful, and you will find more doors opening for awareness. They are mutual. Just as there are vicious circles, there are virtuous circles; this is a virtuous circle.