I cannot say why people become sannyasins.
All that I can say is that I am utterly mad, and a few people find themselves in tune with me.
OSHO
"Why do so many people become sannyasins?"
Everybody does so for a different reason; hence it is very difficult to answer.
The real sannyasins cannot even give any reasonable answer why they have become sannyasins. It is a kind of love affair; they fall in love with this madman. It is utterly mad, it is absurd. They simply find some inner communion; something happens to their heart, not to their head. And when something happens to the heart it is unanswerable.
But a few people become sannyasins out of the head; then they are only pseudo sannyasins. They can give you answers why they have become sannyasins.
So this much can be said: one who can answer WHY he has become a sannyasin is a wrong sannyasin, a pseudo sannyasin; the real one can only shrug his shoulders. He can say, "I don't know, it simply happened." He will not be convincing to you — he can't be — but try to be sympathetic with the person. It is a love affair.
Who has ever been able to say why he has fallen in love? One simply falls in love for no reason at all. Suddenly something clicks; it clicks in such a subtle way that you cannot figure out why. The why is unanswerable. And whenever it is answerable, the person is not a real sannyasin. This is the paradox: those who can answer, they are not real sannyasins; those who cannot answer, they are real sannyasins.
And then there are different people and they come with different backgrounds, they come here for different reasons. They open up to me in different ways, they take different time, they have different paces.
Different people will have different reasons. Somebody is here for the exploration of the unknown; somebody is simply here because of the wife. Somebody is here because this has been his search for many lives; somebody is here accidentally. He was just passing Poona, from Kabul to Goa, and seeing so many crazy orange people he became intrigued. He said to himself, "Man, something far out is going on!" And then he got hooked… then he forgot all about Goa. Then slowly slowly, people forget about the whole world. Then this small place becomes their whole world.
So there are different reasons. I cannot give you a single answer. I cannot say why people become sannyasins.
All that I can say is that I am utterly mad, and a few people find themselves in tune with me.
OSHO