Don't renounce your wife and children and your kin. Renounce the bridges, drop them - Osho.

It happened: One Hindu sannyasin, Swami Ramateertha, came back from America. He was staying in the Himalayas; his wife came to see him – he became a little disturbed. His disciple, a very penetrating mind, Sardar Poorn Singh, was sitting beside him. He watched, he felt that Ramateertha was disturbed. When the wife went, suddenly Ramateertha threw off his orange robes. Poorn Singh asked, ”What is the matter? I was watching, you were a little disturbed. It felt that you were not yourself.”

He said, ”That’s why I’m throwing off these robes. I have met so many women, and I was never disturbed. Nothing is special about this woman – except that she was my wife. That ’my’ is still there. I am not worthy to wear these robes. I have not renounced the ’mine,’ I have renounced only the wife. And the wife is not the problem; NO other woman has ever disturbed me. I have walked all over the earth, but my wife comes – she is as ordinary a woman as any – and suddenly I am disturbed. The bridge is still there.” He died in ordinary clothes, he never again used the orange. He said, ”I am not worthy.”

Don't renounce your wife and children and your kin. Renounce the bridges, drop them – that is your affair; it is not concerned with the wife. If she continues to think about you as her husband, that is her problem, not yours. If the son continues to think of you as his father, that is his problem; he is a child, he needs maturity.

I say to you: Tilopa means renouncing the inner dreams and bridges, the inner worlds.

OSHO