According to Osho, the real issue isn’t marketplace versus forest, but choice itself. Any decision keeps you in the world; choiceless awareness is sannyas. Don’t manufacture renunciation or think it through—let it happen, like a spontaneous ‘yes’ born of awe and surrender. Stay or go, without preference; then even the marketplace becomes the forest.
You don’t have to pick the city or the forest; just relax and stop choosing, and peace will come wherever you are.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
First of all, you have asked, “Then what should that person do—choose the marketplace or the forest?”
Choose, and you are lost. In choice is the world; even if he chooses the forest, it is the world—because in choice is the world. And if he stays in the marketplace without choosing, that is sannyas. Choicelessness is sannyas; choice is the world. Therefore there is no way to choose sannyas—sannyas happens. So many people come to me. I see two kinds of sannyasins—those who make it happen, and those to whom it happens. Those who try to make it happen say, “We’re thinking about it; what you say appeals; we’re considering.” “We’ll take sannyas someday—just not now. Right now there’s so much to do; yes, what you say does make sense.” I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin was sitting in the mosque and the preacher gave a sermon. In the middle, in a very dramatic way, he asked, “Those who want to go to heaven, please stand up.” Everyone…
Osho, the so-called sannyasins do shopkeeping in the name of religion. And you have told your sannyasins to keep running their own shops. This seems like a contradiction. Please clarify.
There is not the slightest contradiction. The so-called sannyasins do shopkeeping in the name of religion because they were torn away from their shops. And they were not ripe yet; the mind still wanted to do business, yet they were made to sit in the temple. They turn the temple into a shop. Therefore I do not tear my sannyasins away from their shops; I say, if a temple is going to be turned into a shop, it is far better to turn the shop into a temple. I don’t wrench them from the shop, because I see that those sannyasins who were wrenched away have turned the temple into a marketplace. Until the very relish for the shop dries up within you, breaking you away from the shop is futile. And if the relish has really disappeared, what need is there to break away at all? Sitting in the…
Osho, I want to be free of the mud of the world, but you call that escape. What should I do?
The seeds lie here, buried in this very mud. The wise can turn even poison into nectar. The foolish can turn even nectar into poison. Those who have told you, “Run away from the world,” can only be foolish people. And this does not mean I am saying that if you sometimes go to the mountains and spend a few days there in silence and solitude it is something bad. But remember, you must return here. The mountains must not become your habit. The mountains must not become your addiction. The mountains must not become your attachment. Let it not happen that you become so attached to the forest’s peace that you can no longer bear the tumult of the marketplace. That would be an even greater defeat, a greater weakness. You would have become more pitiable than before. The peace of the forest—go there sometimes, enjoy it. That too…
Osho, why do saints leave family and society and go to the forest in search of the Divine? Please explain.
And where else should they go? There is no other place. It is society and family that have distorted you; you must be free of them. Whether someone literally leaves society, or leaves it mentally, one way or the other one has to be free of society. The forms may differ. Charandas left the world; Kabir remained in the world. Do not think Kabir did not renounce. Kabir too renounced—he renounced while living in the world. The world has to be left. One must be free of the limits of the world. If you can be free from within—be so; nothing is more auspicious. But if you find that inner freedom alone is not possible, then outer freedom will also be needed; if that seems necessary, then that too is necessary. But free you must be. These layers of darkness on your mind have been laid by society. When you…
I am very close and whatsoever is available here is just around you -- not only without, but within you -- but it is too close. That's why you can go on missing it. Relax your eyes. There is no need to look for anywhere now. You have come home. This you will have to remind yourself of a little bit .... [A sannyasin asks for guidance on how to be choiceless where important decisions are needed.] There is some subtle problem, and it comes to everybody who wants to remain choiceless. But there is a misunderstanding, that's why the problem. Choicelessness does not mean that you will not have to choose. In life, in practical things, you will have to choose, you will have to decide. If you want to go somewhere you will have to decide whether to go by car or by plane or by train.