80. the life cycle
the sun sets; then you can lie down here and rest for a few hours; at midnight I shall
take you to the Manikarnikaand will make you a sannyasithere.”
It was about 1p.m.when he began, and it was 7:30 when he finished talking to me.
He spoke about sannyasa, but in a rather different manner from what I had expected,
for he did not say what a sannyasishould or should not do, nor what he or other san-
nyasisare doing, but what Icould and should do. That was very different, in many
ways, from the cut-and-dried notions Hindus entertain about sannyasis. I hardly re-
member any specific thing he said; but in the years to come, whenever I heard some-
thing I thought important, or whenever I felt that I was striking at a new idea, it oc-
curred to me that it had somehow been contained in my teacher’s instructions before
he gave me sannyasa. He told me that sex was the one great obsession of the monk’s
mind—in various shapes and under the pressure of control: internal control on ac-
count of his vows, external control on account of society. Now, I had been worried
by sexual thoughts during my Mayavati days, yet I had not really suffered. And as
though the Swami had anticipated my thoughts, he said, “It is not now, when you
are a young and active monk, BrahmacariRamachandra, that your mind will be
much troubled by sex. The real trouble begins well after forty-five. Between then
and sixty you will have a hard time, for then your body revolts, your mind panics;
they want to enter into their rights ere the gates close. Chastity will come relatively
easily to you for the next ten years, with no more than a little care. At your age it is
hard, no doubt, and it is a very great sacrifice; but it is not at all impossible. And if
you do fall, occasionally, let that not worry your mind either. Perform your pre-
scribed penance and start all over again; that is the only way. I have not seen a monk
who did not fall. In fact he must fall to rise. Only the ignorant draw a dividing line
between rise and fall. And the lawyers. But we are sadhus,not lawyers.”
What did he advise me to do after the ceremony? “That ’s up to you,” he said.
“You may stay and have your bhiksahere in Banaras for a while. Vifvanath’s tem-
ple is always accessible. Or you may make a pilgrimage, as our generation ofsad-
husused to do.” I told him that I would rather like to wander and live on alms as the
sadhushad done from time immemorial, but was it right for me to live on alms and
feed on the poor when I was not needy or indigent? Was it in accordance with the
times, and with the things this newly independent country needed, that men who
could actively contribute should go a-begging? “This is all nonsense,” he said with
an almost contemptuous gesture. “As you wander through the villages, you don’t
just stand there and eat. You sit under a tree or at the temple and teach. For that you
get some rice or rotiand dal. You could teach in a college, but your teaching in the
villages gives the people there a chance to learn what they would not otherwise hear