Be together without becoming a church: keep your own freedom, stay yourself, and stay alert.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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…
A friend has asked: Osho, you said about a wayward son that one should let him pass through his experiences, and he will learn on his own. But even after experiencing, he still prefers the same thing—someone is asking about his wayward son—no matter how much suffering he has to endure, even if death itself should come, still he does the same. After stumbling again and again, he repeats it. What can be done? How to reform him?
You will not be able to reform him. If life cannot reform him, if even death cannot reform him, what will you be able to do? If what you say is true—that again and again, even after suffering, he does the same thing; even if death comes, he will still do the same thing, and he does not change—then take your hands off. You will not be able to reform him. You cannot be stronger than death. And one who does not learn from suffering—what will he learn from you? Do not call him a wayward son. You have found yourself a Jadabharata. Because those whom suffering does not reform, whom even death does not reform—these are great, arrived masters; they are in the ultimate state. Do not even try to reform such a one. And why are you so eager to reform another? It is enough to reform yourself.…
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.
Osho, for the past two or three days many listeners, seeing the new sannyas and the new sannyasins around you, wish to hear about them from your own mouth. Please say something on this.
Such are man’s limits. To think that the whole of humanity is one is beyond the ordinary man’s limits. To think that all temples and all mosques belong to the same God is difficult. For the limits of the ordinary, it will be hard. But sannyas is a declaration of being extraordinary. So the second point: sannyas is an entry into religion—not into Hinduism, not into Islam, not into Christianity, not into Jainism, but into religion. What does this mean? Against Hinduism? No. Against Islam? No. Against Jainism? No. For that in Jainism which is religion, and against that which is merely Jain. For that in Hinduism which is religion, and against that which is merely Hindu. For that in Islam which is religion, and against that which is merely Islamic. Against the limited, and for the unlimited. Against the formed, and for the formless. A sannyasin belongs to no…
Osho, until now there have been two kinds of seekers. Those who went on the inner journey minimized their relationship with the outer world. Those who set out on conquests in the outer world had no awareness of the inner. You have given us a new dimension of living—that we must complete our journey in both directions. But the sprouts of silence and peace that arise from meditation and satsang get crushed in the external hustle and bustle. And the morbidity and politics we become habituated to in the struggles outside turn into chains on the inner journey. Master, please bless us with the compa
Psychology says: become like Narcissus and you become deranged, ill. And your prevalent approach to the inner journey has been Narcissus-like—close yourself in; you are everything; nothing exists outside you. Close all doors and windows—let no sun, no breeze enter, no moonlight, no starlight; let no sound be heard outside—close the ears, shut the eyes! There are stories of saints gouging out their eyes lest they be attracted by forms, piercing their ears lest music affect them. These are symptoms of derangement. The natural result was that very few people became interested in such a religion—only those slightly unbalanced found a rationale for their imbalance, because madness began to look spiritual. This may surprise you, but remember: in Western countries, where religion’s influence has waned, more people become insane. This gives Indian egotists an opening: “See, although we are poor, lacking science, technology, money, food, jobs, clothes, roofs; diseases, famines,…