Holy Orders of Sannyas

Book excerpt: A Saiva Swami’s Diksha And Lifetime Vows Of Renunciation A religious covenant between a sannyasin—one who has renounced the world in service to God Siva—and the divine beings of all three worlds. In the fulfillment of these holy orders of sannyas, the sannyasin, of his own volition, irrevocably and eternally binds himself to his religion—the Saiva Samayam—to the timeless traditions of the sanatana dharma, to his fellow Hindus, to his brother renunciates and, most especially, to the Siva Yogaswami Guru Parampara. Sannyas may be simply defined as Saivite Hindu monasticism, and a sannyasin is one who has renounced the world in search of God Realization and has been formally initiated by a guru who is himself a sannyasin. In Sanskrit the word sannyas literally means “to throw down” or “to abandon.” Thus, sannyas is the giving up or abandonment of the world, and the sannyasin is one who has so renounced. True sannyas is not a denial of life but life’s highest fulfillment. It is unmitigated selflessness. It is the relinquishment of the transient and illusory in favor of a permanent Reality, the eschewing of a worldly life that one may, by gradual stages of purification, draw inward toward Parasiva, Truth Absolute. It is a break with the mundane and a binding unto the Divine. It is the repudiation of the dharma, including the obligations and duties, of the householder and the acceptance of the even more demanding dharma of the renunciate.