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Osho on Will taking sannyas help in meditation?

Will taking sannyas help in meditation?

Sannyas is not about renouncing the world, but about an inner commitment to seek the invisible truth, transforming your consciousness and deepening your meditation.

— Osho
According to Osho, sannyas is an inner resolve to seek the invisible truth, not an outer renunciation. When such a decisive commitment accompanies meditation, the mind’s direction concentrates, distractions fade, and progress accelerates—'ten millionfold.' Your world reorganizes around this intent, deepening meditation without fleeing life; what changes is consciousness, not circumstances. Thus, taking sannyas powerfully catalyzes and focuses meditation.

Yes—making a firm inside promise to seek truth (sannyas) makes your mind focus, so meditation becomes easier and faster without running away from life.

In His Own Words

From the Discourses

Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.

Dhyan Darshan · Discourse 5
1970-12-23 · Bombay · Hindi · English translation

Another friend has asked: If a seeker takes sannyas, will it help him in meditation?

To those friends who come to watch, I would say: try doing it as well. Because from outside, nothing at all can be seen. You will see people dancing and jumping; what is happening within them, you will have no idea. And what is happening within—that alone is the real thing. If that could be seen, something would be seen; otherwise, nothing has been seen. Some things can be seen from the outside; some things can be seen only from within. Meditation and religion are such things that can be seen only from within; they cannot be seen from the outside. Look from the outside too—one day, stand outside and watch; another day, stand inside and watch as well. Standing outside, chatting and laughing, let no one think that he is very intelligent. Having watched from outside, do not conclude that these people are mad and I am wise. In…
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Snap Your Fingers Slap Your Face And Wake Up · Discourse 24
1979-06-27 · Chuang Tzu Auditorium · English
That's what sannyas is: becoming a child again again reclaiming the innocence of childhood which the society has destroyed. It will be difficult, because to live with people who live in lies, without lies living with them is difficult. People who are all pseudo and phony, to live with them as true is to invite danger -- but it is worth. This life is bound to go, so even if one has to sacrifice one's life for truth one should not be worried about it. Truth is far more valuable than life itself because life ends in death but truth never ends. Truth is eternal, timeless, deathless. Manoj Bharti. One thing to be remembered: that from this moment meditation becomes your goal; everything else is secondary. So arrange your life in such a way that everything revolves around meditation.
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Another thing to bear in mind is the role of the Master, the guru, in sannyas. Up to now sannyas has been tethered to a Master who initiates someone into it. But sannyas is not something which anyone can give you as a gift; it has to be received directly from the divine. Who else but God can initiate you into sannyas? When someone comes and asks me to initiate him into sannyas, I tell him, "How can I initiate you into sannyas? Only God can initiate you. I can only be a witness to your being initiated. Get initiated by the divine, the supreme being, and I will bear witness that I was present when you were initiated into sannyas. My function is confined to being a witness, nothing more." A sannyas tied to the Master is bound to become sectarian.
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Jharat Dashahun Dis Moti · Discourse 10
1980-01-30 · Pune · Hindi · English translation

Osho, what is the definition of God?

Words are very small. If you say God is light, then what of darkness? The scriptures have said that God is light. Suppose we accept this as a definition—then what about darkness? Where will darkness go? Darkness is too; in fact it is far more than light. Light sometimes is and sometimes is not; darkness is always, eternal. Where will you place darkness? If you say God is light, darkness is left out. If you say God is darkness, then light is left out. If you say God is both darkness and light, a contradiction arises: they cannot be together. Try to have both darkness and light in the same room. If you bring in light, darkness disappears; if you preserve darkness, you cannot have light. Then how can both be together? That becomes an impossibility. So you cannot say “both” either. Then the fourth device is to say: it…
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The Golden Wind · Discourse 10
1980-07-10 · Chuang Tzu Auditorium · English
Sannyas simply means this: a decision to find one's truth, a commitment that 'From this moment my life will be devoted to finding mY truth.' And remember: the truth of Buddha, the truth of Jesus or the truth of Zarathustra cannot be your truth. If you repeat Jesus or Buddha you will be living in the mind. And when you put the mind aside, naturally you put your Christianity, your Hinduism, your Mohammedanism aside because they are all part of the mind. The moment you put the mind aside you have put the whole of history aside, the whole world aside. Then you are moving into your own being with no history, no past, with no society, as if you are alone on the earth, as if you are the first being on the earth, in existence. Once this decision becomes a commitment...
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