Why are only sannyasins allowed to participate in the dance on Sambodhi Day?

Why did you give the order yesterday that only sannyasins would take part in the dance on Sambodhi Day? Why were others prevented from participating?

If you are not ready to participate in me, I am also not ready to participate in you. Slowly, gather courage. Only when you open the door of your heart to me can the door of my heart open to you. It is not that it is closed to you, but it will not be able to open. The key to my heart’s opening is hidden in the opening of your heart. So gradually I will remain only for those who are ready to dive. Only if you dive can you walk with me. I have no taste for crowds. I am not a politician to be excited by crowds. My interest is in those few who are truly eager to seek—and who have the courage to put something at stake. What does “sannyasin” mean? One who has staked something. You want to risk nothing and yet receive everything. Such…

Osho, for a long time I had the longing to meet you. So I came from Rohtak to your ashram for a ten-day camp. Yesterday I met Ma Yoga Laxmi and requested to see you. But she said that no non-sannyasin can meet you; if I take sannyas, then I can. May I know why the feelings of a non-sannyasin are rejected, when he has come from so far, with such hope and reverence, to meet Osho?

Yash Sharma! Crossing the distance between Rohtak and Poona will not help. The distance between you and me has to be crossed. The very name of crossing that distance is sannyas. Sannyas is not a formal ritual—it is the process of bridging two inner spaces. I understand, you must have felt hurt. You came from so far. But do you know, people here have come from very, very far! Rohtak is quite near. There is hardly a corner of the world from which people have not come. Think of Rohtak as a by-lane of Poona—not far at all. If meetings were arranged by distance, you would never get your turn. If the rule were: the farther one has come, the sooner he meets—then forget it, your number would not come. Coming from a distance will not do. There is another distance—erase that. Then even if you don’t come from Rohtak,…

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…

Beloved Osho, why do you give sannyas to almost anybody who comes to see you? What is your concept of sannyas? What obligation does it involve?

But once you know a greater phenomenon -- a greater bliss, a greater happiness -- then you are not renouncing things. They just drop away, just like dry leaves from the tree. No one knows and no one hears, the dry leaves just drop. The tree remains oblivious to it and there is no wound left behind. So, to me, everything has a moment to happen, a moment of ripeness -- ripeness is all. One must ripen; otherwise one will be wandering unnecessarily and harassing himself unnecessarily and destroying himself unnecessarily. One should ripen, then the opportunity comes by itself. So renunciation is through positive growth. That is what I mean by my sannyas -- renunciation through positive growth. There is no negativity at all, no denial, no suppression. I accept the human being as he is. Of course, now much is potential, but as he is, he is not…

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.