Omm Namo Bhagavate

Does tyaga lead to sannyasa or does sannyasa lead to tyaga—which one is the cause, and which is the effect?

Sannyasa is a three-dimensional concept: renunciation of result, renunciation of doership and renunciation of identification with the process.  Sannyasa is complete only when all the three conditions are fulfilled.  There must be no “I-ness,” no identification with the process of doing, and no hankering for a result of self-benefit.  It is not that the action is performed and a result is not coming.  A result will definitely come, because no action is devoid of result.  This result may be as you expect, or something completely opposite to your expectation, but result is a must.

You may bring me a cup of tea early in the morning, thinking,  “Swamiji will be happy,” or “Swamiji needs me.”  But instead of thanking you, I may scream and shout at you and throw the cup.  My throwing the cup or shouting is because of some action on your part.  The result of action always is there.  It may not be as we expect, but no result is possible anywhere in this creation without an action behind it.  This is why when Arjuna asked this question to Krishna, “Tell me the difference between tyaga and sannyasa,” Krishna did not answer it directly.  It’s a very tricky question, and the last one the seeker asked to the guru, in the final chapter of Gita and the last phase of the journey.

This concept of sannyasa and tyaga is more mystic than the concepts of God or Soul.  You can’t grasp it unless you relate it to your experiential vision.  This is not something to be understood intellectually.  It’s a very deep experiential concept.  First you have to understand what is sannyasa.  Sannyasa literally means renunciation, and renunciation is a three-dimensional concept.  Like this table, which has length, height and breadth, everything in this creation is three-dimensional, including man.

Man’s dimensions are not height and length, quality and color, or race and religion.  Man is a three-dimensional manifestation of consciousness.  One dimension is the doership: “I am doing, he is doing, she is doing.”  Until I have transcended doership in this form, I cannot see the absence of doership in another form.  As long as I feel, “I am doing,” so long also I will feel Sam is doing, Vishnudash is doing and Tulsi is doing.  When I transcend this doership in my form, I will not be able to see the doership in other forms either.  Second is the dimension of result.  We all see the result, either through the eye of our intellect or the eye of our expectation.  That’s why we are jumping into action.  If we don’t see the result we cannot jump into action.  Very few people exist who don’t see any result for their action but still perform it.  The third dimension is the process.

In sadhana, renouncing the result comes first.  You cannot renounce doership first, that is why Verse 94 came in the second chapter.  Your right is to the work, but not to the fruits thereof.  First, practice renouncing the result.  No one can renounce the result without performing action because without action there is no result, so you have to first perform, and then renounce.  Action comes first.  Every action produces a result and every action carries the fruit with it.  You have to perform action, so that you are creating an opportunity to see whether you are affected by the result or not.  You have to prepare the tea and bring it, because only then Swamiji has the option whether to shout at you or praise you.

Sannyasa means first renouncing the result: “I am making tea, but I am making it for Swamiji and for ashramites.  Not for me.”  But if you are making tea also with the intention that, “Swamiji will offer some to me, so while making it for Swamiji I am also making it for me,” this does not fulfill the condition of sannyasa.  The first and easiest form of sannyasa is renunciation of desire-prompted action, so that no action is performed with a desire.  Any action that is performed for self-benefit is desire.  Any action that is not performed for self-benefit is seva, a sacrifice. You are preparing a cup of tea, but not for you, knowing one hundred percent you will not drink it and you don’t need it, but you are making it for somebody else.  That is not desire but it is action.  The thought came, “Let me prepare a cup of tea for Swamiji,” and you don’t take tea.  Gita says that it is not desire.

Action can be desire-prompted, and it can be service.  When action becomes service then it is the beginning of the process called tyaga, but whether or not it is truly tyaga remains to be seen.  Still, the process began.  When you are preparing the tea for Swamiji without any desire for it whatsoever, and Swamiji does not take it, rather he shouts at you and throws the cup, and you do not get sad and your inner state is not disturbed, and you are feeling the same love and respect, Gita says that you are not only a sannyasi, but also a tyagi.  You are performing action just for the sake of duty, for the sake of service.

That is what the supreme prakriti is always doing.  Sun is rising in the east, and the whole Earth is lighted.  Some people use this for their benefit while others put their curtains down to keep it dark, and sleep.  Either way, the sun is not affected.  A child crawls towards a burning lamp and puts a hand on the lamp, and the fire burns the child’s hand.  Fire is not making any discrimination, “O, here is a child she does not know, so let me not burn her.”  This is natural law.  When through our sadhana we reach such a state of naturalness, we are then sannyasis and tyagis.

Sannyasa is possible only if action is performed.  For me to enter into sannyasa I have to perform action.  For you to enter into sannyasa you have to perform action.  I cannot enter into sannyasa by simply allowing Tulsi to always cook food for me.  I must also take the opportunity of cooking food for Tulsi.  Unless I throw the seed of action I cannot get the possibility of being impacted by the result of my action.  Lord Krishna said sadhana through action is a compulsion in order to reach the state of actionlessness.  In Verse 123 of Gita, he explained that without performing action you cannot reach actionlessness.  Action is a must.  Nothing is possible if you do not perform action, and to quickly reach the state of actionlessness you should always perform action as a sacrifice, as Lord Krishna advised in Verse 128.  Convert all your action into sacrifice.

Here is an example of sacrifice: I will prepare food for Sam, but he has absolute freedom to reject it.  If he accepts it, that’s good and if he rejects that’s also good, but let me do my duty.  My state is not going to be disturbed whatever result my action may receive.  That is called the real state of yoga siddhi in Gita yoga: responding to that signal that comes from the heart without any expectation of result.  If it is accepted, my satisfaction is not increasing by an ounce, and if it is rejected my admiration is not decreased by a drop.  When sannyasa comes this state will remain constantly.  If such a prompting came from the heart and I did not listen to the signal, that prompting would not have been translated into action and the circle would not be complete.  When a signal comes the yogi must allow it to be released through action.  Only when the action is performed does the result have a possibility to manifest, and only when the result is manifested will the impact come back.

If there is absolutely no expectation, and the person is established in tyaga, the result comes—because everything returns to the point of origin—but it has no entry point, and it is diffused to the whole universe.  That is how a drop of charity performed with absolute purity, in a spirit of sacrifice, brings the abundance of an ocean.  On this principle is based this technology of nuclear fission, whereby one atom can produce immense energy.

If we are really practicing the yoga of Gita, every day we should perform some action that is going to benefit others and absolutely not benefit us.  This is how I started.  My sadhana of Gita began when I got this clarity that sannyasa is a three-dimensional concept and has to be practiced.  It won’t come to you all of a sudden.  By changing the robe from white to ochre you cannot become a sannyasi, nor by leaving your home and staying in an ashram, nor by abstaining from tasty food.  Sannyasa is a state of consciousness, and it is a huge attainment. I understood this and started practicing it when I was studying in class ten.  People say practice means mind control and sense control but I did not begin in that way.  Instead, I noticed these old people in our village were getting up early to gather flowers for performing puja.  There was a very old lady who would go to pluck the flowers alone, using a walking stick.  Most of the days she would be standing by the tree and if any boy was coming, she would ask, “Can you give me that flower, my hand cannot reach.”  Instead, the boys started taunting.  That is when I was contemplating on how to start practice.  The idea came to pluck some flowers each morning before she arrived, and put the basket right near the tree.  I thought if I was standing there to pick the flower for her, she would praise me and the ego in me would be delighted.  See how my sadhana consciously began.  I knew that I could not give her any chance to know that I was giving the flower.  So I would pluck it and put it right at the base of the tree.  She would look here and there, and call out to see whether anyone was coming for it, then finally take it and go.  I was watching from my terrace.

I would write in my diary, “One action performed.”  This was followed by a second action and a third.  When I went to college I developed the habit of putting money in an envelope and dropping it through the windows of some of my friends whose meals were stopped due to non-payment of cafeteria dues.  In our hostel if you made a partial payment, you were again allowed to eat.  Since I was from a rich family, my father was giving me much more than I could spend.  I would put ten rupees in a plain envelope and drop it through my friend’s door, because if I went and paid the manager, he would tell my friend who paid the dues.  Instead I started secretly dropping this money, and when the friend used it to pay the dues, the others would ask where the money came from.  “Somehow I found an envelope with ten rupees,” he would say.  Maybe God gave it.”  I would listen, never giving any hints that I was doing it. This is how the practice started.

Action must be performed which is not for self-benefit but for the benefit of others.  This can be started in small ways.  When you perform this type of action, to that extent you are transcending the desire plane and entering the aspirational zone and your consciousness will expand.  When it becomes a habit—and habit is the second nature of man—prakriti will create more and more opportunities.  As you think, so you become.  See what happens if you constantly start thinking, “How can I help?  Yesterday I helped one person, today how can I help two?  Yesterday I performed one desireless action, let me perform at least one more today.”

Sannyasa is to be practiced and that must begin with action that is not going to benefit you in any way.  Desireless action, not desire-prompted action.  This will lead to freedom from doership, the second step of sannyasa.  If you perform action in such a way that nobody will praise you, because nobody knows that you are doing it, then praise will not come and your system is expanding and you will have less pull to perform action for fame.  That is the easiest way to enter into a natural state of sannyasa.  Sannyasa should come naturally.  No need of changing your robes or running away from your family.  Remaining inside the family you can be a perfect sannyasi.

The third and most difficult part is renunciation of the identification with the process.  For example, if I shout at a woman and her husband says, “Swamiji, why are you shouting at my wife?” that is called identification with the process.  I am not shouting at the husband, I am shouting another person, but the husband is getting identified with my shouting because the husband is identified with his wife.  When I explained this in Rishikesh, people said, “Swamiji, you are saying someone will shout at my wife and I will not be identified but the scripture says one must always protect the honor of his wife.”

I told them, “Protecting and getting identified with your protection are two different things.  You have to understand.  You are not doing yoga; you are only listening about yoga.  That’s why this confusion is coming to you.  When you will actually practice yoga it won’t come.  Yoga is experiential, not intellectual.”

If you are doing sadhana step-by-step, here is my recommendation.  First perform action without a desire motive.  Second, perform action without a doership motive.  Third, try to be unaffected by the process.  Do what you feel to be done, but if you are unable to succeed, don’t break your head.  Be neutral, because it is something which prakriti does not want you to do.  When these three are complete you will be a perfect sannyasi, and a perfect sannyasi is a tyagi.  Unless you have become a sannyasi you cannot become a tyagi.  Sannyasa leads to tyaga.  Not vice versa. By the time you become a total sannyasi you are a tyagi.  You have to attain the state of sannyasa before your hair turns gray because sannyasa is a difficult sadhana.  You cannot do it when your body is weak.

Sannyasa is the state of sadhana and tyaga is the state of siddhi.  Tyaga is the attainment, while sannyasa is the practice whose purpose is to reach that attainment.  This is the reason when Arjuna asked Krishna, “Tell me what is sannyasa, what is tyaga, and the difference between the two,” Krishna did not answer directly.  He told Arjuna what the wise men and enlightened beings have said, and then he explained that tyaga is of three types, but Krishna did not actually define tyaga or sannyasa.

Arjuna is you.  When you will not only read Gita, but also practice and live Gita, you will always feel, “I am Arjuna, I am at this stage.”  This is the life that you all should live.

[From a 2012 Interaction at Satyachetana Ashram, Tiruvannamalai, India.]