Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 22. SANNYAS IS OF THE HIGHEST
enough, a bad person makes a good story; he is a must for a story, even for history. What more can
we say of a good man than this, that he has been good from the cradle to the grave?
Isolating him from the world, we deprive the sannyasin of experience; he remains very poor in
experience. Of course, isolation gives him a sort of security, but it makes him poor and lackluster.
I want to unite the sannyasin with the world. I want sannyasins who world on farms and in factories,
in offices and shops right in the marketplace. I don’t want sannyasins who escape from the world;
I don’t want them to be renegades from life. I want them to live as sannyasins in the very thick of
the world, to live with the crowd amid its din and bustle. Sannyas will have verve and vitality if the
sannyasin remains a sannyasin in the very thick of the world.
In the past, if a woman wanted to be a sannyasin, she had to leave her husband, her children, her
family; she had to run away from the life of the world. If a man wanted to take sannyas he had to
leave his wife, his children, his family, his whole world, and escape to a monastery Or a cave in the
mountains. For me, such a sannyas has no meaning whatsoever. I hold that after taking sannyas,
a man or woman should not run away from the world, but should remain where he or she is and let
sannyas flower right there.
You can ask how someone will manage his sannyas living in the world. What will he do as a
husband, as a father, as a shopkeeper, as a master, as a servant? As a sannyasin how will he
manage his thousand and one relationships in the world? – because life is a web of relationships.
In the past he just ran away from the world, where he was called upon to shoulder any number
of responsibilities, and this escape made everything so easy and convenient for him. Sitting in a
cave or a monastery, he had no responsibilities. no worries; he led a secluded and shrunken life.
What kind of a sannyas will it be which is not required to renounce anything? Will sannyas without
renunciation mean anything?
Recently an actor came to visit me. He is a new entrant into the film world. He asked for my
autograph with a message for him. So I wrote in his book: ”Act as if it is real life and live as if it is
acting.”
To me, the sannyasin is one who lives life like an actor. If someone wants to blossom in sannyas
living in the thick of the world, he should cease to be a doer and become an actor, become a witness.
He should live in the thick of life, play his role, and at the same time be a witness to it, but in no way
should he be deeply involved in his role, be attached to it, He should cross the river in a way that his
feet remain untouched by the water. It is, however, difficult to cross a river without letting the water
touch your feet, but it is quite possible to live in the world without getting involved in it, without being
tied to it.
In this connection it is necessary to under stand what play acting is. The miracle is that the more
your life becomes play acting, the more orderly, natural and carefree it becomes. If a woman, as a
mother, learns a small truth, that although the child she is bringing up has been borne by her, yet he
does not belong to her alone, that she has been no more than a passage for him to come into this
world, that he really belongs to that unknown source from which he came, which will sustain him
through his life and to which he will return in the end, then that mother will cease to be a doer; she
will really become a play actor and a witness.
Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy 420 Osho