Beloveds,

Love.
A Sannyasin that is trying to follow religious dictates renounces their family, attachments and desires.

But a Sannyasin that is on the path of the mystic, the true sannyasins, renounce their attachments, and try to accept absolutely everything else!

Sannyas means "renouncing"; but what it was meant to represent is that you are renouncing your attachments, your ambition that the world work the way you "think it ought to" work.
It had nothing to do with renouncing pork or meat or wine or sex or spaghetti; that was invented later, by priesthoods, because it is far easier (and more profitable for the priesthoods) to turn sannyas into silly rules, than to actually have to give up your ambitions and ideas about life, which is something much, much harder.

Because the other way, in fact, you are not "renouncing" anything: you are either not doing something that you didn't want to do anyways, or you are simply not acting on something you would like to do.
This is why so many celibate priests are sex-obsessed.
The ones who aren't are the ones who were sexually numb already; if something woke up their sexuality they would be sex-obsessed as well.
The rest are either having affairs with women in secret, and thus "breaking their vows", or they are forcing sex on little children, animals, etc. because they are too afraid of having an affair and have bottled up their sexual desires to the point that they have let it warp them; or they are not having any sex at all but have it constantly on their minds, and redirect it into something far more warped like religious violence.

So you don't give up sex: you give up your ambitions and notions about sex.
You give up worrying about having it, or not having it, about how to have it, or with YOU.
You let it be natural.

You don't give up your family or your love for your family; you give up your ambitions and notions about your family.
You stop trying to expect your mother to act in a certain way, or your son to become a certain kind of person.
You stop thinking that your family has to be like "leave it to beaver", or that they should bend to do things your way all the time.
You let it be natural.

So real sannyas, our sannyas, is about renouncing one's ambitions and one's own notions of the world; it has nothing to do with religious rules.
The only four rules one agrees to when one receives initiation, and becomes a true Sannyasin in this Mystery School are:
1. To meditate every day.
2. To receive a new name.
3. To wear the mala.
4. To wear red.

The first of these is the only real rule. The other three are only repetitions of the first rule, because the second rule is simply mantra yoga (to receive and meditate on one's personal mantra, your sannyas name), and the third and fourth are simply sammasati, techniques that you use to try to remember to be meditative.

That is ALL that you need to do to be a "good" sannyasin. Anything that anyone else tells any of you about what Sannyasins must or must not do is nonsense.

Love
Swami

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