Chapter 18 Sannyas (Discipleship)

For me, Sang Yasheng isn't a serious matter. Life itself isn't serious; serious people are always lifeless. Life itself is simply full of energy, without any purpose. So for me, Sang Yasheng is about living a purposeless life, treating life as a game, not a job. If you can treat your whole life as just a game, you are a Sang Yasheng. You have given up everything. Giving up isn't leaving this world, but changing your attitude. That's why I can enlighten anyone into a Sang Yasheng. For me, enlightenment itself is a game. I don't demand any qualifications—whether you are qualified or not. Because qualifications are only demanded when doing serious things. As long as we exist, everyone is qualified to play the game; even if they are not qualified to be a Sang Yasheng, it doesn't matter, because the whole thing is just a game.

Therefore, I will not require any qualifications, and my Sannyasin involves no obligations. Once you become a male disciple (sannyasin) or a female disciple (sannyasi-ni), you are completely free. It means that you have made a decision, a final decision: to live in indecision, to live in freedom.

Once you are enlightened to become Sang Yasheng, you enter a future without a map or plan. You are no longer bound by the past; you can live freely. Therefore, for me, Sang Yasheng is someone who decides to live to the fullest, to live at their best, to live to the very end. You live from one moment to the next, act from one moment to the next, and each moment is complete in itself. You don't decide how to act; when that moment arrives, you act. There are no pre-determined decisions, no pre-planned actions.

Sangyasheng means living from one moment to another, unbound by the past. If I give you a rosary, if I give you new clothes, it's merely to aid your memory: to remind you that you no longer need to make any decisions, that you are no longer who you once were. When this awareness becomes so deep that you no longer need to remember it, then throw away the robe, throw away the rosary. But this only happens when awareness becomes very deep, when even in sleep you know you are a disciple. So, a new name, a new robe, a rosary—these are all merely designed to help you, to help you move towards freedom, towards total existence, towards total action.

To retreat from the world means you've recognized yourself as a seed, a potential. Now you've made the final decision to grow. Deciding to grow is a great sacrifice—giving up the safety of the seed, giving up the seed's "integrity." But this safety comes at a great cost. A seed is dead; it's only potentially alive. Unless it becomes a tree, unless it grows, it's dead, only potentially alive. As far as I know, humans, unless they decide to grow, unless they leap into the unknown, are like seeds: dead, closed off.

To become Sang Yasheng is to decide to grow, to decide to enter the unknown, to decide to live in uncertainty. This is leaping into the unknown; it is not a religion, nor is it bound by any religion; it is religion itself.

- Let the past die

At first glance, Sangye seems like something that restricts a person's movement. Why must someone wear red? Since Sangye is something internal rather than external, why must someone change their appearance?

Sanya is not negative. The word Sanya indicates negativity, but it's not pure negativity. It means leaving something, but it simply means leaving something because you've gained something else. Something must leave, not because it has meaning in itself, but because it creates space for something new to come in. Negativity simply creates space. If you want to grow, you need space.

As we are now, there is no space within us; we are crammed with unnecessary things and thoughts. The Sangye, in its negative sense, simply means creating a space to leave behind those trivial, useless, and worthless things so that you can grow within it.

Growth is weakness, but growth is also positive. I want to emphasize: Sanjaya is positive. Negativity is merely clearing; it simply clears the space so that growth can enter. Negativity is only external, something external, while growth is internal. Positivity is the center, negativity is the surroundings.

In reality, there is no such thing as something purely negative or purely purely positive. That's impossible, because they are polar opposites. Existence exists between the two poles: positivity and negativity are the two banks of a river, and existence flows between them. No river can exist with only one bank, and neither can existence. It's wrong to emphasize only one side, one bank, or one end. But when you accept the whole, you emphasize nothing. You accept both poles, and then you grow within them; you utilize the dialectical movement of the poles, and you progress within it.

- The process of rebirth

Sangyesh is understood as negative. Its meaning has become negative because you have to start with negativity, you have to start with your surroundings. This must be understood because Sangyesh is internal: something needs to grow internally, so why start externally? Since you must grow internally, why not start internally?

However, you cannot begin from within, because in your current situation, you are around, you are outside. You can only begin from who you are now, you cannot begin from where you are not.

For example, health is something internal; it grows. But now you are sick, you're not feeling well, so we must start with your illness instead of your health; we must eliminate the disease. By eliminating the disease, we are merely creating space for health to grow; however, this beginning is negative.

Medicine has no definition of health; it cannot have one. All it can offer is a definition of disease, and a science of how to eliminate disease. Health remains undefined, and disease is negatively defined because you can only begin with disease, not with health. When you are healthy, you don't need to begin at all.

So if you have that inner space, you don't need Samsara. Samsara is about negating the world (the samsara), the world, which is disease. When I say the world (samsara), I don't mean the world is sick; I mean the world you create around yourself. Everyone lives in a world they create.