What is the philosophy of do-it-yourself in relation to sannyas?

Osho, I don't want to take sannyas because I believe in the philosophy of do-it-yourself. What have you to say about it?

Around Easter time, an ad appeared in The New York Times: "Do Easter at home for only five thousand dollars!" Mr. Jones sent the five thousand dollars and received a parcel with: a box of nails, two wooden beams, one measuring three meters and the other measuring one meter and eighty centimeters, and a blonde Jew, thirty-three years old. Angelo, what will you do by yourself? You don't know even the abe of it. You will need to become part of a Buddhafield. You will need to become part of a place where many many people are growing. Alone in a desert you cannot bloom; you will need to become part of a garden. This is the garden of a Master where many trees are growing, here many trees are coming to a flowering, to fruition. The seed in you will start having a tremendous confidence in itself that "If…

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.

Osho, how do I take sannyas? I keep thinking and then I stop. What is this hesitation?

One night a thief broke into Mulla Nasruddin’s house. While the thief gathered things, Mulla quickly spread his blanket on the floor. When the thief, ready to tie up the loot, looked for a sheet to wrap it in, he found a blanket laid out. He was a bit scared—when he had entered, there had been no blanket on the floor. He’d seen a man sleeping under it; now that man lay on the bed without the blanket, and the blanket was on the floor! But it wasn’t the time to ponder. He tied his bundle and set off. Mulla got up and followed. Hearing footsteps, the thief turned and saw the same man who had been on the bed—first under the blanket, then without it. The thief got nervous and said, “Why are you following me?” Mulla said, “Why not follow? I was the only one left back there!…

First, a few things about sannyas.... It is an initiation into the formless. It is not an initiation into some rigid form, it is not giving you a certain discipline -- on the contrary it is an initiation into freedom, into a formless creative chaos. The old concept of sannyas all over the world was to give you a rigid discipline, to give you a character, to give you a certain form, a pattern, a life style. My sannyas is not like that at all; it is a radical charge. I don't give you any character, because to me the man of character is a dead man. I would like to take all character from you so you are left in a creative chaos... so each moment one has to respond to life, not out of a certain pattern.

Question: Second question: Osho, why am I afraid of sannyas? You still think Yama’s messengers ride buffaloes! A perfect pair—black buffalo, black messengers—a match made in heaven: one blind, one with leprosy! An exact fit. But these are born of your fear. Those who have died knowingly, who have recognized life, have said something else: Supreme Light dawns. In the moment of dying it is as if a thousand suns rise at once. As if lotuses bloom upon a lake, blooming and blooming. As if an infinite lake, with infinite lotuses opening. Those who have died awake, in meditation, have seen neither any blackness in death nor buffaloes nor messengers—yes, they have found God’s embrace, union. But for that you need to muster a little courage first. Sannyas is for the courageous. For the timid there are many temples. This temple is not for the timid.