Also, society teaches you to carry the past so that it can put guilt and fear in you that are based upon the past incidents. The past is unwanted baggage. Sannyas is Dharma - Sanskrit equivalent of the Pali word dhamma used by Buddha. Also translated as righteous behavior. disconnecting from the past. When you disconnect from the past and move to a new future, initially, there is utter insecurity. Sannyas is utter insecurity. In utter insecurity, there is nothing else to hold on to, so you will find god! Why do you think I give you a spiritual name? I give you a spiritual name to help you more easily disconnect from the past. The new name that I give you will constantly remind you of the psychological revolution that has happened in you, the new understanding that has happened in you.

The name also indicates your individual spiritual path, according to your own innate nature, which will lead to the ultimate flowering of your consciousness. 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 themselves. 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 jumped into the water and his own image disappeared. I realized that the message had come from god to me: one has to jump in spite of the fear. The third master was a small child. I went to a town where a child was carrying a lit candle.

He was going to the mosque to put the candle there. I asked the boy, Have you lit the candle by yourself? He said, Yes. Then I asked him, There was a moment when the candle was unlit, and then there was a moment when the candle was lit.