What should I do now as a sannyasin who is attached to Jain monks and nuns?

Osho, I was born in a Jain family. I have been reading you for three years. I have even taken sannyas. Yet I am scattering like quicksilver. I enjoy your talks on the Jin-sutra, but I also have a strong taste for pleasure. And tradition and conditioning lie on my feet like shackles. My mind is becoming divided and deranged; I am falling apart. Please guide me.

So with religion. The religion you choose is your love. The religion you inherit from your parents is your arranged marriage. Marriage never becomes love. And the day love turns into marriage, love dies. Or if ever marriage becomes love, marriage ends. Love is something utterly different. What is the difference? You chose it—in freedom. From your own feeling. From your heart. No calculations, no cleverness, no worldliness. Chosen in innocence. So if you tell your sons to keep me—“Keep this mala safe; we gained much from it”—they will keep it safe, they will even worship it, but I will become a burden to them. Do not repeat the mistake your parents made. Your connection with me is personal, intimate. Do not impose it. If you truly received something, then tell your children how you searched and found—uproot your treasure and show it to them; say, “We found, by seeking…

Question: Second question: Osho, my guru Swami Latpatanand Brahmachari used to say: Maintain a sattvic diet of milk and fruit. Rise at brahma muhurta and chant Om. Keep only three pieces of clothing with you. Accumulate nothing else. See every woman as your mother–sister–daughter. Do not allow bad thoughts to arise in the mind. And keep your loincloth tight and firm. But my guru Latpatanand soon passed away to heaven, and I have still not been able to walk the path of truth according to his teachings. Now your words attract me, and they also feel strange and create a kind of doubt within me: does the search for truth require discipline or a free, unrestrained life? I am twenty-six years old, and it is time to enter the householder stage. I am in a dilemma whether to take sannyas or to marry. Please guide me.

Osho, after listening to you I experience slackness and sadness in practical life. But when you speak on love and devotion, on joy and celebration, my mind blossoms and fills with delight. Kindly show me my path.

You see—no second Mahavira, no second Krishna, no second Rama. Once one comes, he never appears again on the stage. Remember this. You too are new. Learn from everyone; accept your own. Listen to all; let the final decision come from the heart. So if talk of renunciation brings you slackness and sadness; your heart’s flower does not open but withers; the bud does not become a flower but, on the contrary, the flower closes its petals—as many flowers do at dusk when the sun sets—then understand: this is not your sun of truth. It may be someone else’s truth, because some flowers bloom only when the sun sets—night-blooming jasmine is like that. It may be hers; it is not for you. Then your path is perfectly clear. Wherever you glimpse joy, go there with courage. I am not saying you will find joy there every time. Many times you…

The second question is: Osho, if Lao Tzu says, “Do nothing,” then what becomes of effort?

Do you think that doing nothing is some petty effort? Doing nothing is the greatest effort in this world. The power of non-doing is the highest mastery there is. Doing—children can do that. There’s no great effort in doing; it’s something quite natural and ordinary. Animals are doing too. Non-doing is something very great. So don’t think that when Lao Tzu says “don’t do,” inaction, effort comes to an end. Surrender is the greatest resolve. Now this is very upside-down; it doesn’t occur to us, does it? We feel that surrender—placing one’s head at someone’s feet—means we are finished. But know that to place your head at someone’s feet is not within the capacity of an ordinary person! And to truly put your head at someone’s feet, to let go of yourself completely, is only possible for one who is utterly his own master. How will you let go? Simply…

Osho, I do not know by what grace of merit, by what thread of love from births upon births we have been bound to you, that your compassion and the blessed opportunity of your presence has been bestowed, that receiving sannyas from your sacred hands I am fulfilled. Our whole country is indebted to you. From every corner of the world people are coming here ceaselessly, every day—drowning in the ocean of love, drinking to the brim the streams of nectar that pour down. May the grapevine remain, from which the wine is made. May this clay remain, from which the wine-cup is formed. May these drinkers

I was a guest in a Christian friend’s home. I opened his Bible and found a dried rose. I said, “How apt!” He asked, “Why do you say apt?” I said, “Because as this rose is, so are the words of the Bible—dried roses. On Jesus’ lips those words were alive! Only on Jesus’ lips could they be alive; they are such words that can be alive only on the lips of one like Jesus, on no one else’s. On his lips they were like a rose upon a living bush—roots drinking the earth’s sap, leaves drinking sunlight, breezes passing and the bush breathing—and the rose blossoming. On Jesus’ lips, the words were like that—sun’s light within them, the earth’s sap within them, the breath of the winds within them. God throbbing inside them. You have done well to keep a dried rose in the Bible; it is the symbol…