Categorical Condition – In Gita Verse 6.2 What is called renunciation you should know to be the same as yoga, or linking oneself with the Supreme, O son of Pāṇḍu, for one can never become a yogī unless he renounces the desire for sense gratification.
Krishna is saying that the person who is doing rituals and following the words of scripture is not sannyasin. The real sannyasin is one who lives in the world and renounces his desires for the fruits but does act as real sannyasin. Whose actions are categorical conditions: and that condition is awareness, meditation.
Looking at life from the standpoint of self-ignorance is sansara, the world. Looking at life from the standpoint of self-knowing is sannyas.
Therefore, whenever someone says that he has taken sannyas, the whole thing seems very false. This ‘taking’ of sannyas creates the impression that it is an antagonistic act against the world. Can sannyas be taken? Can anyone say he has ‘taken’ knowing? And will any knowing that is taken like that be, true knowing? A sannyas that is taken is not sannyas.
You cannot put a cloak of truth around you. Truth has to be awakened within you. Sannyas is born. It comes through understanding, and in that understanding we go on being transformed. As our understanding changes, our outlook changes and our behavior is transformed without any effort. The world stays where it is, but sannyas are gradually born within us. Sannyas is the awareness that ‘I am not only the body, I am also the soul.’ With this, knowing the ignorance and attachment inside us drops away. The world was outside and it will still continue to be there, but inside us there will be the absence of attachment to it. In other words, there will be no world, no sansara inside us.
Sannyas means courage more than anything else, because it is a declaration of your individuality, a declaration of freedom, a declaration that you will not be any more part of the mob madness, the mob psychology. It is a declaration that you are becoming universal; you will not belong to any country, to any church, to any race, any religion.
You don’t belong anywhere – that is reality. All hankering to belong is deceptive. The very idea to belong creates organizations; the very idea to belong creates the church – because you cannot be alone, so you want to drown yourself somewhere in a crowd. A sannyasin is one who has accepted his aloneness. It is fundamental; it cannot be drowned. By becoming a sannyasin you are not becoming a part of a certain organization – this is not an organization at all. By becoming a sannyasin, you are becoming courageous enough to accept a certain fact: that man exists in aloneness. And it is so fundamental; there is no way to escape from it. It is as fundamental as death. In fact, death is nothing but bringing you the news that you were alone, and now you are alone.
And it does not mean that you have to go to the mountains, you can be alone in the marketplace. It is simply a question of being aware, alert, watchful, remembering that you are only your watchfulness. Then you are alone wherever you are. You may be in the crowd, you may be in the mountains; it makes no difference, you are just the same watchfulness. In the crowd you watch the crowd; in the mountains you watch the mountains. With open eyes you watch existence; with closed eyes you watch yourself.
You are only one thing: the watcher.
And this watcher is the greatest realization. This is your buddha nature; this is your nature of enlightenment, of your awakening. This should be your only discipline. Only this makes you a disciple: this discipline of knowing your aloneness. Otherwise, what makes you a disciple? You have been deceived at every point in life. You have been told that to believe in a master makes you a disciple. That is absolutely wrong; otherwise, everybody in the world is a disciple.
Somebody believes in Jesus, somebody believes in Buddha, somebody believes in Krishna, somebody believes in Mahavira; everybody believes in somebody but nobody is a disciple, because to be a disciple does not mean to believe in a master. To be a disciple means to learn the discipline of being yourself, of being your true self.
When Krishna says – one can never become a yogī unless he renounces the desire for sense gratification – means – Sannyasins would live life in its totality, but with an absolute condition, categorical condition: and that condition is awareness, meditation. Go first deep into meditation, so you can cleanse your unconscious of all poisonous seeds, so there is nothing to be corrupted and there is nothing inside you which power can bring forth. And then do whatsoever you feel like doing.
Tags: Categorical Condition
