|
Main Index
|
| |
| | | Book Name: The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 2 | Previous Next | |
|
|
|
| |
for their old age.
In India they say.... If somebody young comes to me and I initiate him into sannyas, sooner or later somebody comes and he says, 'This is not good; he's too young to be a sannyasin. Sannyas is for old people.' When they are almost dead, when they are ready to be thrown on the junkyard, when one of their feet is already in the grave, then sannyas.
People go on postponing sannyas for the very end. God seems to be the last item on their list. They have a shopping list -- god is the last. When they have purchased everything -- consistent, inconsistent, relevant, irrelevant -- when they have wasted all their energy, when nothing is left, when they are just exhausted, then they remember god. But who is going to remember god then?
Sannyas is for the young. Sannyas is for the strong. Buddha initiated a new trend into sannyas. He dropped the old hindu concept that one should become a sannyasin in the old age.
Hindus have four stages -- they are very calculating, very mathematical. Manu seems to be the greatest mathematician of life... very clever. He has divided life -- twenty-five years for education, brahmacharya; then twenty-five years for living in the world, the life of a householder, grihastha; then twenty-five years for getting ready to leave the world... Looking after children who have become grownups now, who are getting married, who are coming from their universities; and then the last -- sannyas, the fourth stage of life. That means after seventy-five years. The last -- when everything has happened, when there is nothing else, then... then god.
This seems to be very insulting. This is very insulting to god -- that you are fit for him only when you are dead. It seems you somehow relate god with death, not with life. God should be in the very center of life.
And Buddha says it is difficult to be religious when young -- but that is the challenge. It is difficult to observe the way when you are strong -- but that is the challenge. It is difficult to become religious when you are rich -- but that is the only way to become religious.
When you are rich and strong and young, when energy is streaming,
|
|
|
|
| |