Renouncing things is less difficult than people believe: it's all a matter of getting started. Once you've succeeded in dispensing with something you thought essential, you realize you can also do without something else, then without many other things.

"You might think of renunciation in terms of some external act like a New Year's resolution, or leaving family and friends to go off to a cave. But renunciation is much more subtle than that — and much harder — and much much more continuing. On the spiritual journey, renunciation means non-attachment.

To become free of attachment means to break the link identifying you with your desires. The desires continue; they are part of the dance of nature. But a renunciate no longer thinks that he is his desires.

"What is the necessity of giving up the world altogether. It is enough to give up the attachment to it." — Ramakrishna"

in this way, seek wrongly, and the further they range, the less they find what they are looking for. They proceed like someone who has lost their way: the further they go, the more lost they become.

But what then should they do? First of all, they should renounce themselves, and then they will have renounced all things. Truly, if someone were to renounce a kingdom or the whole world while still holding onto themselves, then they would have renounced nothing at all. And indeed, if someone renounces themselves, then whatever they might keep, whether the kingdom or honour or whatever it may be, they will still have renounced all things.

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For him who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man's nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts.

On the value of the renunciation that we should practise inwardly and outwardly. You should know that no one has ever renounced themselves so much in this life that there was nothing left of themselves to renounce. But there are few people who are properly aware of this and who remain constant in their efforts. It is a fair trade and an equal exchange: to the extent that you depart from things, thus far, no more and no less, God enters into you with all that is his, as far as you have stripped yourself of yourself in all things. It is here that you should begin, whatever the cost, for it is here that you will find true peace, and nowhere else. People should not worry so much about what they do but rather about what they are. If they and their ways are good, then their deeds are radiant. If you are righteous, then what you do will also be righteous. We should not think that holiness is based on what we do but rather on what we are, for it is not our works which sanctify us but we who sanctify our works. However holy our works may be, they do not in any way make us holy in so far as they are works, but it is we, in so far as we are holy and possess fulness of being, who sanctify all our works, whether these be eating, sleeping, waking, or anything at all. Little comes from the works of those whose being is slight. This teaches us then that we should make every effort to be good, and should worry not so much about what we do or the character of our actions, but we should be concerned rather about their ground.

Many people renounce the world because they can’t find a satisfactory place in it, and almost any spiritual teaching can be used to justify a pathological lack of ambition. For someone who has not yet succeeded at anything and who probably fears failure, a doctrine that criticizes the search for worldly success can be very appealing. And devotion to a guru — a combination of love, gratitude, awe, and obedience — can facilitate an unhealthy return to childhood.

if you just suppress your desire, and you attempt to renounce the object of your desire, you are likely to be tied to it.

Renunciation — is a piercing Virtue — The letting go
A Presence — for an Expectation

Cultivate the art of renunciation.

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.

To renounce freedom is to renounce one's humanity, one's rights as a man and equally one's duties.

All meaningful change requires a genuine surrender. Yet, to surrender does not simply mean to give up; more to give up one’s usual self and allow something other to enter and redeem the lesser sense of self. In surrendering, we fall to the bottom of our arguments and seek to touch the origin of our lives again. Only then can we see as we were meant to see, from the depth of the psyche where the genius resides, where the seeds of wisdom and purpose were planted before we were born.

Renunciation, or refusing to identify with that which one gathers (however precious it may be), is the ultimate doorway to knowing.

Renunciation of objects, without the renunciation of desires, is short-lived, however hard you may try.