SAMSAR AND SANNYAS🔗

Samsar literally means the 'world' or the 'path'. It refers to the worldly life that causes endless cycles of birth and death.

There are two ways to move in any path: either with baggage and people or by yourself. In the first case, you may have to wait for a long time. In the second case, you can reach even this very minute.

Sannyas is the decision not to carry any baggage while moving. You can have everything, but you don't have to carry it. When you don't carry anything, Exist-ence brings to you what you need for the moment. That is sannyas!

There is a beautiful story from the life of Buddha ...

Buddha's disciples gathered around him one day and asked him to teach them the essence of sannyas. He told them a small story:

One man was living on an island by himself. Suddenly he got the feeling that it was time to move from the island. He did not have a boat. So he made one with some twigs, branches, leaves and whatever else he could find. It was a difficult journey but somehow he crossed and reached the other side.

Buddha asked the disciples, 'After reaching the other side, should the man keep the boat or discard it?'

The disciples came out with different answers.

Buddha continued, 'The man of sannyas discards the boat knowing that he will be provided for as needed in the future. The man of samsar keeps it so that his effort doesn't go waste if he wants to journey back!'

A sannyasi walks with his thought on Existence. A samsari walks with his thoughts on how to exist. A sannyasi uses the boat to cross the ocean of life. A samsari carries the boat even beyond the time it is needed, not knowing he can drop it. That is the difference. There is nothing right or wrong in this. It is just two different ways to live.

Let me explain sannyas in the context of karma because sannyas is the shortcut to exhausting karma.

Karma is nothing but the unfulfilled actions of your past that pull you again and again to take birth to fulfill them. It is the very cause of the cycle of birth and death. It makes you take birth again and again in this world until it is exhausted.

If you can become aware of and hold on more firmly to the higher rung you may let go of the lower rung more easily. That awareness is called sannyas. It is the process of understanding and moving to the higher rung and leaving the lower rung. As you move, renunciation happens as a byproduct. Because you realize that to climb higher you don't need anything but yourself! Anything you take with you is only going to make it more difficult to climb.

A samsari moves to pursue his fantasies. He goes to places to see the beauty of Existence. A sannyasi sees everything around him as already divine and beau-tiful! He is fantasized by what he sees! When the samsari starts turning inward, he becomes a sannyasi. Until he finds the burning need for that, it is better for him to continue with what he is doing. For a sannyasi, the mind is happy all the time. What he gets is what he wants. He is always living in the mood of grateful and welcome acceptance. For a samsari, the mind is occupied with too many conflicts. He keeps trying to get what he wants. With intelligence, the samsari can awaken to the truth, that what he is getting is what he needs for that moment and for his ultimate fulfillment.

The samsari is concerned with material things and living life in a limited way. The sannyasi is concerned about death – death of all that is not him, which is his ego, possessiveness, lust, anger, fear, jealousy and discontent. He knows he is something beyond all this. His whole quest is to find this, because once he finds it, he has found the higher rung of the ladder and he can leave the lower rung where the constant push and pull of all these emotions and material things reside.

Sannyas is the search to answer the question 'Who am I?' A sannyasi puts his whole energy into discovering the answer to this question. If people ask you, 'Who are you?' you will generally reply, 'I am so-and-so's son, I am an engineer, I am a professor.' But those words describe who you are in your relationships with the world. If there were no world, then who are you?

The great enlightened masters who founded the world religions have said repeatedly, 'Aham Brahmasmi' meaning, 'I am That' in the Hindu tradition, or 'Be still and know that I am god' in the Christian tradition, or Anal-Haq meaning 'I am the Truth' in the Islam tradition. Experiencing that you are god is the purpose of human life.

Once this purpose is experienced, the inner bliss that all these great masters talk about starts happening. Then you understand that the outer world is a beautiful stage where the divine play is happening. There is ultimate freedom from all worldly difficulties. You do, and yet you don't do, you speak and yet you earlier. Each one was suffocating the other. Now the gap is there. The gap is not a gap of distance but a gap of awareness.

Sannyas is also living without the burden of the inner woman or inner man. What is meant by inner woman or inner man? It is nothing but the lust hidden in your mind, the fantasies that you have created in your mind. Shiva says beau-tifully in the Tantra, 'A man who has abandoned the woman in him, in his inner mind, is a sannyasi, even if he is still in the family.' On the contrary, if thoughts of a woman persist in a sannyasi's mind, he cannot be called a sannyasi. This is the scale to measure if a man is a sannyasi.

In Buddha's teaching, The Four Noble Truths, the second truth deals with the cause of suffering. He beautifully says that suffering is because of the demands we make on life every moment. It is like asking a banana tree to bear mangoes! We will understand this habit only when we bring in awareness.

Not only that, when you watch, you start seeing exactly how transactions are happening in relationships. You see how expectations are driving the whole thing. You see ulterior motives in everything.

There is a little known truth about a sannyasi, that a sannyasi takes respon-sibility for the whole of Existence. He doesn't know the difference between his family and the rest of the world. All are the same. He wishes for the liberation of anyone who comes his way. On the other hand, a samsari takes responsibility for one family or maybe for a few organizations. This taking of responsibility is always towards a definite cause. It is either to accumulate the credit of serving, to fulfill some obligation, or to co-exist easily with the people around him.

The nature of a sannyasi's responsibility is completely different. For him, the whole world is his family. There is no obligation driving him. Responsibility happens completely out of the quality of his inner space. Also, a samsari can rest after fulfilling every duty at that stage in life. A sannyasi continuously works, because people are constantly in need of truths in their life.

A sannyasi is established in rich relationships. People think sannyasis run away from relationships. A young girl asked me while I was addressing a college gathering, 'Was it failure in love that caused you to become a sannyasi?'

I told her, 'It was success in love that caused me to become a sannyasi!' Actually, sannyas is what softens you into real love; love towards not just one person but towards the whole of Existence. requires a deep sense of sacrifice. It takes courage to sacrifice anything to live with integrity!

That is why anything that these great masters did in their lives always culmi-nated in eternal auspiciousness! Everything they did was an effort to integrate themselves with deep sincerity and devotion. The intense effort to integrate oneself completely is what is called penance. Penance always ends in auspi-ciousness. There will be innumerable things happening in your life all the time. Enduring all those things and intensifying your integrity with them is called penance. On the other hand, if you allow life’s happenings to shake you, then you land in disgrace. Which way you wish to go is up to you.

Adi Shankara was a great enlightened master from India. As a young boy, he was caught in a dilemma when he wanted to pursue the path of sannyas. He wanted to leave home with the permission of his mother, but she was unwilling to let go of him.

One day, he went to bathe in the river. Suddenly, his mother heard him crying out loud for help. She ran out and saw that a crocodile had caught his leg. He was struggling to be free.

Suddenly, by a flash of thought, he cried to her, ‘Mother, if you give me permission to become a sannyasi, I will be freed from this crocodile now to continue with my life.’

The mother was surprised and asked how. He explained, ‘According to the Vedas, if I enter a new ashrama or stage of life, it is equal to being born again. So, if you give me permission to enter into sannyas, then maybe god will give me a fresh lease on life!’

The mother was totally helpless. She quickly made up her mind. It was better to have her son as a sannyasi than see him dead. She agreed.

Immediately the crocodile released the grip! Adi Shankara ran to his mother with great joy. He had lived the truth he sought at that moment … and it worked.

The first two are easy to follow. But the third, living the Truth all the time, is difficult. It is very rare. Sannyas is the courage to live what we think is the Truth. We give importance to speaking the Truth. But living the Truth is most

But if you keep oscillating, if you go on one path for half hour, and then change your mind and go on the other path for the next half hour, what will happen? You will never reach Bangalore! At least if you decide and take the 30,000 kilometer path, you will reach Bangalore, even if it takes you one year! But if you keep oscillating between these two paths, even if it takes thirty years, you will not reach Bangalore.

Even if the chosen path is wrong, the one who moves with integrity auto-matically comes to the correct path. He achieves what needs to be achieved. There are only two types of people on planet earth – those who live with integrity and those who live without integrity, that's all! The scale to measure a person is not the path on which he went but whether he lived with integrity or not.

Integrity is the strength to live your belief, come what may.

Second, not getting diluted by external influences is also integrity. It is the ability to not alter our integrity or dilute ourselves due to inner confusions or outer influences. The person who lives with integrity, even if he dies on the train platform, will die with the satisfaction that he lived completely. The person who lives without integrity, even if he dies in the best hospital, will die with dissat-isfaction. The scale to measure the quality of a person's life is to see how much he lived in tune with what he felt was life. For example, if he is an aethist, if he lived as a strong atheist and died as a strong atheist, there is nothing wrong. He will attain! That very strength, when it goes deeper and deeper in him and searches, will show him the truth!

Integrating the mind is the essence of life. Decide you will always say and do only what you feel is right. Then, you will come to tremendous clarity and conviction in the inner and outer worlds.

Swami Vivekananda recounts that his master, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, died leaving him the responsibility of the mission. At the same time, Swami Vivekananda's father died leaving behind a family of utter poverty. Swami Vivekananda was the only hope for his family. He stood between saving his family and saving the world. No one recognized the mission he spoke of. He says beautifully, ‘Who will sympathize with the imaginations of a boy?’ He was, after all, a young boy!

He describes those few days as ‘unimaginable hell’. He was with a small group of boys, with no money, with only one thing: the integrity to live the life they believed in, the life taught by their master. Ten years later, he says, ‘Ten years ago, I could not get one hundred people to celebrate the master’s birth anniversary. Today there are fifty thousand!’ Sannyas is taking a strong deci-

Not properly understanding the goal of life is the root cause of all problems. Sannyas is recognizing the goal properly and integrating to achieve it. Whatever goal you may be running behind in your life, be it money or relationship or what-ever, your end goal is only bliss. There is no other separate goal in life!

There are only two types of people. One group knows the word 'bliss' or 'enlightenment', and the path to it. They live their life according to that. The other group does not know the word or the path, so they come around in circles. That's all! The former is a sannyasi, the latter is a samsari.

You have achieved the human body which gives you the highest possibility to take the jump in consciousness. The glass is already reflecting the sunlight. Now all that the glass needs to do is to see the source of the reflection. That's all! Merging with the Source is what I call enlightenment. It is merging of the individual consciousness with the cosmic consciousness.

If this happens, then the goal of life, the purpose for which the glass was created, is achieved. Then, even if the glass breaks, there is no problem. But without achieving that, if the glass is broken, it is the greatest loss ever. If the human body perishes before enlightenment, there cannot be a greater loss than that.

Sannyas is the means to this achievement. Sannyas is not the end of life. It is the beginning of life. Sannyas is moving towards enlightenment, the only and permanent purpose of life.

If the purpose of life itself is enlightenment, where are we stuck right now? In what areas of our lives are we moving in the wrong direction? Understand that the problem is in recognizing the correct goal. If the goal is right, you have achieved it. If your goal is right, it means you are already living it. 'Conditioning' is the reason that you miss the goal. When you were born, you came as a free bird, a Paramahamsa or the supreme swan, to flit and fly blissfully around and enjoy the whole of Existence. But after coming, not only did you fly around, but unknowingly you also landed on planet earth. That was the problem. There are many people waiting to catch such birds that land! Society waits to fit you into the frame of country, religion, caste, community and creed.

You were a sweet soul when you landed on planet earth. You were not a Hindu, or an engineer or a worker. But understand that society wants engineers and workers. It is not bothered about your consciousness. Actually, neither your parents nor society is aware that there is something called consciousness. They themselves don't have

A sannyasi works for the present moment. He works to give his whole life to Existence and doesn't care about the results. The results take care of them-selves. That is his way. He knows only the moment, nothing else. Therefore, he learns directly from Existence every moment. That is why he has no doctrine, no religion. He moves in synchronicity with the whole of Existence and learns through it.

There is a Sufi saying, 'The Sufi is the child of the moment.' In Sufi texts, every moment is called a breath. And the Sufis are called 'the folks of the breaths,' because they live in full awareness of every breath, of every instant. According to them, every moment, a new Self arrives. That is the spirit of sannyas, it is being fresh every moment. A person of the moment learns from the moment. For him, Existence is his teacher.

When the great Sufi mystic Hasan, was dying, somebody asked, 'Hasan, who was your master?'

He said, 'I had many masters. If I relate their names it will take months or even years, and it is too late now. I am going to die any time. I will tell you about three masters.

The first one was a thief. Once I got lost in a desert, and when I reached a nearby village, it was late and everything was closed. At last I found a man who was trying to make a hole in the wall of a house. I asked him where I could stay and spend the night. He said, 'At this time of night it will be difficult. If you don't mind staying with a thief, you are welcome to stay with me.'

I stayed with this man for one month. Each night he would tell me, 'Now I am going for my work. You take rest and pray for me.' When he came back, I would ask him, 'Did you get anything?' He would say, 'Not tonight. But tomorrow, god willing, I will try again.' He was always happy and hopeful, never in a state of hopelessness!

When I was meditating for many years, and nothing was happening, many times the moment came when I was so desperate, so hopeless, that I thought I should stop all this nonsense. And suddenly I would remember the thief who would say every night, 'God willing, tomorrow it is going to happen.'

My second master was a dog. One day, I was going to the river to quench my thirst. A dog came and he was also thirsty. He looked into the river, and saw another dog there, which was his own image. He became afraid. He would bark and run away, but his thirst was so much that he would come back. Finally, despite his fear, he same desire looks like a molehill. Before being fulfilled, it will seem like your very life. After fulfilling one desire, you simply move to the next desire! Under-stand that the process itself shows that desires are neither solid nor permanent. They are just changing fantasies of the mind.

Sannyas helps you see the temporary nature of desires. Slowly, desires stop getting created. Then all the energy that was locked up in desires is freely avail-able to you. Automatically, your potential will take a jump. You are ready to do anything. Although you live in it, nothing in the material world really pulls you. Even if you see something beautiful, you don’t wish to possess it. You just enjoy it and move on. That’s all. That is sannyas.

Sannyas works like the log of wood that is used to burn the dead body and finally gets thrown into the same pyre. It burns out all the fantasies in you and finally gives itself to the same fire. It is a tool.

Adi Shankara beautifully says in his famous song, Bhaja Govindam:

Even when days and nights, winters and springs have gone, and life almost comes to an end, the grip of desire is still there!

Desire has such a pull at the unconscious level that liberating oneself from it is the greatest liberation.

A small story:

Once there lived a stone cutter. He was not satisfied with his position in life. One day he was passing through a wealthy merchant’s house. Through the gate which was open, he noticed many possessions and important visitors in the merchant’s house. He thought that the merchant must be very powerful. He became jealous and wished that he could be like the merchant.

To his great surprise, the stone cutter suddenly became the merchant, enjoying more luxuries and power than he had ever imagined.

One day, he was standing on the road when he saw a high official pass by. He was carried in a beautiful chair, accompanied by attendants and escorted by soldiers beating gongs. Everyone, no matter how wealthy, had to bow down before the procession.

He thought, ‘How powerful that official is! I wish I could be a high official!’

Immediately, he became the high official, and he was carried everywhere in his beautiful chair.

One day it was extremely hot, and he felt very uncomfortable in the sticky chair. He looked up at the sun. It was so bright and beautiful in the sky. He thought,

If life itself is changing all the time, then why are we trying to frame it? Buddha says in his Dhammapada, 'Life is like a flash of lightning in the sky.' Life is transient. Then what are we trying to do? We are trying to do an impossible job. Our job is to see, enjoy, and move on. If everything is a passing manifesta-tion of Existence, then where is the scope for ego or fear or greed? Sannyas, as such, doesn't change anything. Everything remains the same. But it changes the way you see things. Sannyas happens in you. Sannyas has nothing to do with the outer world.

Sannyas is awakening the charioteer. Man's body is like a chariot and his consciousness is the charioteer. The charioteer is fast asleep, and the chariot is moving according to the horses. The five horses are the five senses, each with its own different idea. Not one of them is the truth. They are just transient ideas!

Even in the most difficult times, a sannyasi remains with the awareness that life is a fleeting dream! He carries a completely different definition for success and failure. He doesn't carry success or failure itself. A samsari on the other hand carries success and failure with him wherever he goes. There starts the problem.