SANNYĀS

SANNYĀS

Sannyas is the mean state of mental neutrality, the psychological bob oscillating neither to affection nor to disaffection but remaining in perpetual rest which is termed 'samadhi'. It is the zeroing in of the mind unto the Spirit, the universal set of attributes cancelling in summation to become the Void that is Brahman, not in name or terminology which language must necessarily rest on but in the indefinable essence of things which is nameless but is absolute in singular existence beyond description or enumeration. The sannyāsi of formal initiation into the monastic order is, strictly speaking, only a novitiate in this regard in this arduous path of renunciation as he begins his upward motion against the gravitational pull of external Nature en route to the summit of realisations. Sannyās is the destination and not the path, the end and not the means. The means is sādhanā, the end sannyās. 

Written by Sugata Bose