renunciation

A monastic once told me renunciation can be great if it means giving up things that make you miserable. (Rebecca Solnit)

A naive definition of renunciation is denying yourself good things—wealth, power, good feelings—because you’re in some sense supposed to. For a long time I considered it synonymous with deprivation. A more useful definition stems from realizing those things aren’t as good as they may seem. The point of renunciation isn’t to make yourself miserable for some higher good, it’s to allow yourself simply to be happy.

In Buddhism, the term in Pali is nekkhamma, translated as “giving up the world and leading a holy life”. It’s connected with Non-attachment, with giving up our craving and clinging to the things of the world, more than giving up the world itself. Joseph Goldstein suggests translating it as “non-addiction”. It relates to reincarnation (metaphorically): that we might continue making the same mistakes until we give up the ideas or attachments that keep us making those mistakes.

In English, the term derives from the Latin meaning the reversal of an announcement, a taking-back of something you had earlier proclaimed. This element of reversal is important. Can you really renounce something you haven’t experienced in the first place?

Renunciation without letting-go is just repression

[We] rather will nothingness than not will. (Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality)

Friedrich Nietzsche criticized the “ascetic ideals” of earlier philosophers and priests, highlighting an important way that renunciation often gets corrupted by those who, instead of letting go of something, fixate on denying it to themselves and others. This may look superficially like renunciation, but is actually the opposite. Consider the motivations of the religious leader who takes a vow of celibacy and goes on a crusade against others’ “impure” behavior.

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. (Nietzsche)

Further Reading

• Buddhist Pema Chödrön, “Renunciation”
• “Renunciation: The Highest Happiness” by Buddhist Sister Siripaññā