Inner Renunciation as explained by Swami Chidananda.
Merely shaving the head and putting on colored cloth does not make you a Sannyasin. A change of location does not make you a Sannyasin.
Merely shaving the head and putting on colored cloth does not make you a Sannyasin. A change of location does not make you a Sannyasin.
Coming away into seclusion or sitting on a mountain top or inside a cave in the
forest does not constitute Sannyasa, if together with this outer giving-up or
renunciation, you have not simultaneously also kept up a process of a constant
and a continuous inner giving up, an inner renunciation of the false ideas that
“I am this body, I am a human individual, I am a physical being, I am a
psychological being, I am mind, I am emotion, I am sentiment, I am thought, I
am desire, I am memory, I am longing, I am imagination.
All these ideas constitute ignorance. All these falsehoods
should be renounced. They should be rejected.
Truth has to be affirmed again and again and yet again. The
essence of renunciation, therefore, is renunciation of this identification with
the human, individual personality and all that it constitutes, its entire
make-up, right from the physical up to the subtle—memory and imagination, projecting
into the future and identifying with the past.
To lead the spiritual life it is not necessary to withdraw
into the forest, hide oneself in a cave or go to a mountain top. What is needed
is the renunciation of false ideas, of identification with the false human personality.
It requires renunciation of ego, Abhimana, Ahamkara, renunciation of desire,
renunciation of attachment, renunciation of Mamata and Asakti (mine-ness and
attachment).
Swami Chidananda Saraswati (1916 – 2008) was the
president of the Divine Life Society in Rishikesh – associated with the Swami
Sivananda Ashram