According to Osho, sannyas is not a discipline but a radical freedom: drop all control, even self-control; abandon prefabricated rules and future-planning; live spontaneously, moment to moment, dying to the past so the unknown can enter. Embrace life's danger with courage, choose living love over social securities and molds, and let existence guide you rather than the conditioned mind.
Don’t try to control or plan your spirituality; be open, brave, and present, letting the unknown lead you with real love instead of rules.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Ecstasy The Forgotten Language · Discourse 2
1976-12-12 · Buddha Hall · English
What I mean by sannyas is a spiritual discipline so that one becomes a religious person, but it is not happening to me. What to do?
So don't go anywhere, don't renounce. Live it as totally as possible -- and live it as an integrated being. My emphasis is for an integrated being. You are not in the body: you ARE the body. Drop that nonsense of "I am in the body." Hmm? from the very beginning that nonsense makes a distinction, and then you are very far away from the body and a conflict arises. You start manipulating your body, you start controlling your body, you start doing things to your body. You become destructive, you become violent. Your so-called saints are all violent. Howsoever much they talk about nonviolence, howsoever much, it makes no difference. They are violent people. There are two types of violent people. The first type is violent with others; the other type is violent with himself. There are sadists and masochists. The sadists torture others; they become Adolf Hitler, Mussolini,…Read the full discourse →
Far Beyond The Stars · Discourse 5
1977-07-07 · Chuang Tzu Auditorium · English
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.Read the full discourse →
To me, sannyas is not something very serious. Life itself is not very serious, and one who is serious is always dead. Life is just an overflowing energy without any purpose, so to me, sannyas is to lead life purposelessly. Live life as a play and not as a work. If you can take this whole life just as a play, you are a sannyasin; then you have renounced. Renunciation is not leaving the world, but changing the attitude. That is why I can initiate anyone into sannyas. To me, initiation itself is a play. And I will not ask for any qualifications -- whether you are qualified or not -- because qualifications are asked when something serious is done.Read the full discourse →
Come Come Yet Again Come · Discourse 4
1980-10-30 · Buddha Hall · English
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…Read the full discourse →
Just Around The Corner · Discourse 20
1979-05-20 · Chuang Tzu Auditorium · English
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.Read the full discourse →