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 It is very difficult to define a sannyasin, and more so if you are going to define my sannyasins.
Sannyas is basically a rebellion about all structures, hence the difficulty to define. Sannyas is a way of living life unstructuredly. Sannyas is to have a character which is characterless. By 'characterless' I mean you don't depend anymore on the past. Character means the past, the way you have lived in the past, the way you have become habituated to living -- all your habits and conditionings and beliefs and your experiences -- that's what your character is. A sannyasin is one who no longer lives in the past or through the past; who lives in the moment, hence, is unpredictable.
A man of character is predictable; a sannyasin is unpredictable because a sannyasin is freedom. A sannyasin is not only free, he is freedom. It is living rebellion. But still, I will try: a few hints can be given, not exact definitions, a few indications, fingers pointing to the moon. Don't get caught with the fingers. The fingers don't define the moon, they only indicate. The fingers have nothing to do with the moon. They may be long, they may be short, they may be artistic, they may be ugly, they may be white, they may be black, they may be healthy, they may be ill -- that doesn't matter. They simply indicate. Forget the finger and look at the moon.
What I am going to give is not a definition; that is not possible in this case. And, in fact, definition is never possible about anything that is alive. Definition is possible only about something which is dead, which grows no more, which blooms no more, which has no more possibility, potentiality, which is exhausted and spent. Then definition is possible. You can define a dead man, you cannot define an alive man.
Life basically means that the new is still possible.
So these are not definitions. The old sannyasin has a definition, very clearcut; that's why he is dead. I call my sannyas 'neo-sannyas' for this particular reason: my sannyas is an opening, a journey, a dance, a love affair with the unknown, a romance with existence itself, in search of an orgasmic relationship with the whole. And everything else has failed in the world. Everything that was defined, that was clearcut, that was logical, has failed. Religions have failed, politics have failed, ideologies have failed -- and they were very clearcut. They were blueprints for the future of man. They have all failed. All programs have failed.
Sannyas is not a program anymore. It is exploration, not a program. When you become a sannyasin I initiate you into freedom, and into nothing else. It is great responsibility to be free, because then you have nothing to lean upon. Except your own inner being, your own consciousness, you have nothing as a prop, as a support. I take all your props and supports away; I leave you alone, I leave you utterly alone. In that aloneness... the flower of sannyas. That aloneness blooms on its own accord into the flower of sannyas.
Sannyas is characterlessness. It has no morality; it is not immoral, it is amoral. Or, it has a higher morality that never comes from the outside but comes from within. It does not allow any imposition from the outside, because all impositions from the outside convert you into serfs, into slaves. And my effort is to give you dignity, glory. My effort here is to give you splendor.
All other efforts have failed. It was inevitable, because the failure was built-in. They were all structure-oriented, and every kind of structure becomes heavy on the heart of man, sooner or later. Every structure becomes a prison, and one day or other you have to rebel against it. Have you not observed it down through history? -- each revolution in its own turn becomes repressive. In Russia it happened, in China it happened. After every revolution, the revolutionary becomes antirevolutionary. Once he comes into power he has his own structure to impose upon the society. And once he starts imposing his structure, slavery changes into a new kind of slavery, but never into freedom. All revolutions have failed.
This is not revolution, this is rebellion. Revolution is social, collective; rebellion is individual. We are not interested in giving any structure to the society. Enough of the structures! Let all structures go. We want individuals in the world -- moving freely, moving consciously, of course. And their responsibility comes through their own consciousness. They behave rightly not because they are trying to follow certain commandments; they behave rightly, they behave accurately, because they care.
Do you know, this word accurate comes from care. The word accurate in its root means to care about. When you care about something you are accurate. If you care about somebody, you are accurate in your relationhip.
A sannyasin is one who cares about himself, and naturally cares about everybody else -- because you cannot be happy alone. You can only be happy in a happy world, in a happy climate. If everybody is crying and weeping and is in misery, it is very, very difficult for you to be happy. So one who cares about happiness -- about his own happiness -- becomes careful about everybody else's happiness, because happiness happens only in a happy climate. But this care is not because of any dogma. It is there because you love, and the first love, naturally, is the love for yourself. Then other loves follow.
Other efforts have failed because they were mind-oriented. They were based in the thinking process, they were conclusions of the mind. Sannyas is not a conclusion of the mind. Sannyas is not thought-oriented; it has no roots in thinking. Sannyas is insightfulness; it is meditation, not mind. It is rooted in joy, not in thought. It is rooted in celebration, not in thinking. It is rooted in that awareness where thoughts are not found. It is not a choice: it is not a choice between two thoughts, it is the dropping of all thoughts. It is living out of nothingness.
THEREFORE, O SARIPUTRA,
FORM IS NOTHINGNESS,
NOTHINGNESS IS FORM.
Sannyas is what we were talking about the other day -- svaha, alleluia! It is joy in being.
Now how can you define joy in being? It cannot be defined, because each one's joy in being is going to be different. My joy in being is going to be different from your joy in being. The joy will be the same, the taste of it will be the same, but the flowering is going to be different. A lotus flowers, a rose flowers, a marigold flowers -- they all flower, and the process of flowering is the same. But the marigold flowers in his own way, and the rose in his, and the lotus in his. Their colors are different, their expressions are different, although the spirit is the same. And when they bloom, and when they can whisper to the winds, and when they can share their fragrance with the sky, they are all joyous.
Each sannyasin will be a totally unique person. I am not interested in the society. I am not interested in the collectivity. My interest is absolutely in individuals -- in you!
And meditation can succeed where mind has failed, because meditation is a radical revolution in your being -- not the revolution that changes the government, not the revolution that changes the economy, but the revolution that changes your consciousness, that transforms you from the noosphere to the christosphere, that changes you from a sleepy person into an awakened soul. And when you are awakened, all that you do is good.
That's my definition of 'good' and 'virtue': the action of an awakened person is virtue, and the action of an unawakened person is sin. There is no other definition of sin and virtue. It depends on the person -- his consciousness, his quality that he brings to the act. So sometimes it can happen that the same act may be virtuous and the same act may be sinful. The acts may apparently be the same, but the people behind the acts can be different.
For example, Jesus entered into the temple of Jerusalem with a whip in his hand to throw out the moneychangers. He upset their moneychanging boards. Alone, singlehandedly, he threw all the moneychangers out of the temple. It looks very violent -- Jesus with a whip, throwing people out of the temple. But he was not violent. Lenin doing the same thing will be violent, and the act will be sinful. Jesus doing the same act is virtuous. He is acting out of love; he cares. He cares about these moneychangers too! It is out of his care, concern, love, awareness, that he is acting. He is acting drastically because only that will give them a shock and will create a situation in which some change is possible.
The act can be the same, but if a person is awake the quality of the act changes.
A sannyasin is a person who lives more and more in alertness. And the more there are people who exist through awareness, the better the world that will be created. Civilization has not yet happened.
It is said that somebody asked the Prince of Wales, "What do you think about civilization?" And the Prince of Wales is reported to have said, "It is a good idea. Somebody is needed to try it. It has not happened yet."
Sannyas is just a beginning, a seed of a totally different kind of world where people are free to be themselves, where people are not constrained, crippled, paralyzed, where people are not repressed, made to feel guilty, where joy is accepted, where cheerfulness is the rule, where seriousness has disappeared, where a nonserious sincerity, a playfulness has entered. These can be the indications, the fingers pointing to the moon.
First: an openness to experience. People are ordinarily closed; they are not open to experience. Before they experience anything they already have prejudices about it. They don't want to experiment, they don't want to explore. This is sheer stupidity!
A man comes and wants to meditate, and if I tell him to go and dance, he says, "What will be the outcome of dancing? How can meditation come out of dancing?" I ask him, "Haveyou ever danced?" He says, "No, never." Now this is a closed mind. An open mind will say, "Okay. I will go into it and see. Maybe through dancing it can happen." He will have an open mind to go into it, with no prejudice. This man who says, "How can meditation happen out of dance?" -- even if he is persuaded to go into meditation, he will carry this idea in his head: "How can meditation happen out of dance?" And it is not going to happen to him. And when it does not happen, his old prejudice will be strengthened more. And it has not happened because of the prejudice.
This is the vicious circle of the closed mind. He comes full of ideas, he comes readymade. He is not available to new facts, and the world is continuously bombarded with new facts. The world goes on changing and the closed mind remains stuck in the past. And the world goes on changing, and every moment something new descends into the world. God goes on painting the world anew again and again and again, and you go on carrying your old, dead ideologies in your heads.
So the first quality of a sannyasin is an openness to experience. He will not decide before he has experienced. He will never decide before he has experienced. He will not have any belief systems. He will not say, "This is so because Buddha says it." He will not say, "This is so because it is written in the Vedas." He will say, "I am ready to go into it and see whether it is so or not."
Buddha's departing message to his disciples was this: "Remember"... and this he was repeating for his whole life, again and again; the last message also was this -- "Remember, don't believe in anything because I have said it. Never believe anything unless you have experienced it."
A sannyasin will not carry many beliefs; in fact, none. He will carry only his own experiences. And the beauty of experience is that the experience is always open, because further exploration is possible. And belief is always closed; it comes to a full point. Belief is always finished. Experience is never finished, it remains unfinished. While you are living how can your experience be finished? Your experience is growing, it is changing, it is moving. It is continuously moving from the known into the unknown and from the unknown into the unknowable. And remember, experience has a beauty because it is unfinished. Some of the greatest songs are those which are unfinished. Some of the greatest books are those which are unfinished. Some of the greatest music is that which unfinished. The unfinished has a beauty.
OSHO
The Heart Sutra,
# 10
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 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. Just by existing everyone is qualified enough to play, and even if he is unqualified to be a sannyasin it makes no difference, because the whole thing is just a play.
So I will not ask for any qualifications. And my sannyas does not involve any obligation either. The moment you are a sannyasin, or a sannyasini, you are totally at freedom. It means that you have taken a decision, and this is the last decision: to live in indecision, to live in freedom.
The moment you are initiated into sannyas, you are initiated into an uncharted, unplanned future. Now you are not tethered by the past; you are free to live. So a sannyasin, to me, is a person who decides to live to the utmost, to the optimum, to the maximum. Moment to moment you live; moment to moment you act. Each moment is complete in itself. You do not decide how to act; the moment comes to you, and you act. There is no predetermination; there is no preplan.
Sannyas means living moment to moment, with no commitments to the past. If I give you a mala and if I give you new clothes, this is only for your remembrance: to remind you that now you do not have to make any decisions, now you are no longer the old. When this awareness becomes so deep that you do not need to remember it, then throw the robe, then throw the mala. But not until the awareness becomes so deep that now, even in sleep, you know that you are a sannyasin. So a new name, a new robe, a mala -- these are just devices to help you; to help you toward freedom, to help you toward total being, to help you toward total action.
Sannyas means that you have come to realize that you are a seed, a potentiality. Now you have taken the decision to grow; and this is the last decision. To decide to grow is a great renunciation -- renunciation of the security of the seed, renunciation of the "wholeness" of the seed. But this security is at a very great cost. The seed is dead; it is only potentially living. Unless it becomes a tree, unless it grows, it is dead -- only potentially living. And as far as I know, human beings, unless they decide to grow, unless they take a jump into the unknown, are like seeds: dead, closed.
To be a sannyasin is to take a decision to grow, to take a decision to move into the unknown, to take a decision to live in indecision. It is a jump into the unknown. It is not a religion and it is not bound to any religion; it is religiousness itself.
OSHO
Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy,
Chapter-9
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