Ramakrishna Quotes on Renunciation

1. Nothing can be achieved without discrimination and renunciation.
    
2. Bhakti, love of God, is the essence of all spiritual discipline. Through love one acquires renunciation and discrimination naturally.
    
3. A man possessed of a strong spirit of renunciation feels restless for God, as the mother feels for her own child. A man of strong renunciation seeks nothing but God.
    
4. One succeeds if one develops a strong spirit of renunciation. Give up at once, with determination, what you know to be unreal.
    
5. You ask me why you don't feel stern renunciation. There is a reason for it. You have desires and tendencies within you. The same is true of Hazra. In our part of the country I have seen peasants bringing water into their paddy-fields. The fields have low ridges on all sides to prevent the water from leaking out; but these are made of mud and often have holes here and there. The peasants work themselves to death to bring the water, which, however, leaks out through the holes. Desires are the holes. You practise japa and austerities, no doubt, but they all leak out through the holes of your desires.
    
6. By constantly hearing about renunciation one's desire for worldly objects gradually wears away. One should take rice-water in small doses to get rid of the intoxication of liquor. Then one gradually becomes normal.
    
7. Can one ever bring God under control through wealth? He can be tamed only through love. What does He want? Certainly not wealth! He wants from His devotees love, devotion, feeling, discrimination, and renunciation.
    
8. The mind of a worldly person is, no doubt, like muddy water; but it can be made clear by a purifying agent. Discrimination and renunciation are the purifying agent.
    
9. While striving for the realization of God, the aspirant has to practise renunciation, applying the logic of 'Neti, neti'—'Not this, not this', But after attaining the vision of God, he realizes that God alone has become all things.
    
10. What need is there of renouncing the world altogether? It is enough if you can rid yourself of attachment. But you must have sadhana (spiritual practice) you have to fight the sense-organs.
     
11. There are many kinds of renunciation. One of them may be called 'markatavairagya', 'monkey renunciation'. It is a false renunciation stimulated by the afflictions of the world. That renunciation doesn't last long. Then there is real renunciation. A man with everything in the world, lacking nothing, feels all to be unreal.
     
12. Worldly people think highly of their wealth. They feel that there is nothing like it. Sambhu said, 'It is my desire to leave all my property at the Lotus Feet of God.' But does God care for money? He wants from His devotees knowledge, devotion, discrimination, and renunciation.
     
13. One can realize God through intense renunciation. But the soul must be restless for Him, as restless as one feels for a breath of air when one's head is pressed under water.
     
14. God-vision is necessary. Now the question is, how can one get it? Intense renunciation is the means. A man should have such intense yearning for God that he can say, 'O Father of the universe, am I outside Your universe? Won't You be kind to me, You wretch?'