Smoking religiously....

Remember when I say that life is God, I don't mean life with a capital L, no; but just with a lower-case l. Just ordinary life is God.

A journalist just few days before asked Jean-Paul Sartre, 'What is the most important thing in your life today?' Sartre said, 'I don't know. Everything: to live, to love, to smoke.' This is a Zen kind of answer. Sartre is not a religious man but the answer is very religious. He has never belonged to any church, he does not believe in God, but the answer is religious. 'I don't know' -- that is the first religious quality of it because only foolish theologians know. A RELIGIOUS MAN IS SIMPLY AWARE OF HIS TREMENDOUS IGNORANCE. Life is a mystery; how can you know it? He knows only one thing, that he does not know. 'I don't know!' -- ask any priest, he cannot say that. He will immediately open his Bible and say, 'Here is the answer. I know.' And he is simply repeating borrowed knowledge. He is a parrot.

Once I went to Varanasi and a great scholar of the Vedas invited me to his home. He was very happy to show me his parrot, because the parrot could recite many things from the Vedas, from the Gita, from the Upanishads. I laughed. The pundit said, 'What's the matter? Why are you laughing?' I said, 'I am laughing because I don't see any difference between this parrot and you. The parrot is a scholar and you are a parrot.' He has been angry since then.

No, a theologian can never say, 'I don't know.' One needs courage to say that. ONE NEEDS REAL GUTS TO SAY, 'I DON'T KNOW.' One needs a certain realization to say that one doesn't know. And everything, when you lead a religious life, everything is beautiful, everything is important. There are no pigeon-holes, there are no categories. You cannot say that something is more important and something is less important. If you live a religious quality, all things are important: a dog is as important as God, not a single bit less important.

Somebody asked Joshu -- a Zen Master, a rare being; the person who asked must have been a sceptic -- he said, 'Joshu, I have heard that you say that God is in everything. What about a dog?' Nobody has answered this way: Joshu jumped on his four legs and started barking. He said, 'I am a dog, and also a god.' Joshu barking is God barking.

Then there is no difference. Nothing is small and nothing is great. The smallest carries the greatest, and the greatest carries the smallest; then the lowest is the highest, and the highest is the lowest; then the valley goes to the peak and the peak comes to the valley. That is the meaning when I say that sex is samadhi and samadhi is sex. Then there is no difference between the low and the high. Everything! -- to live, just to live today is the most important thing. To love, and to smoke.... Such an ordinary thing, to smoke, but WHEN A RELIGIOUS MAN SMOKES HE SMOKES RELIGIOUSLY; THERE IS NO OTHER WAY.

Once a man came to me. I was in Calcutta. The man was a follower of Paramahansa Ramakrishna, but he was worried about one thing: Ramakrishna used very vulgar words, like 'son-of-a-bitch', like that. Ramakrishna used very vulgar words. So he was very worried. He said, 'Everything is good, but Ramakrishna seems to be a little... vulgar. What do you say, sir?' I said, 'His vulgarity is religious. Even when Ramakrishna says 'son-of-a-bitch', it is a blessing. Yes, it is a blessing because whatsoever he says is purified by his saying it. Even a vulgar word becomes sacred; the touch of a Ramakrishna transforms it.' So I told him, 'Don't be worried. Wherever Ramakrishna treads, it becomes holy. If he goes to a prostitute's house, that becomes a temple. Because it is not a question of an outer house or an outer world, it is the quality that you bring to it. 'To smoke,' Sartre says, 'is the most important thing today.' Yes, I ALSO SAY THAT SMOKING CAN BE AS BEAUTIFUL AND SACRED AS CHANTING -- IT IS A CHANTING IN SMOKE. It depends on you.

In Zen monasteries they have a small tea-house, like a temple. Whenever somebody enters the tea-house, he has to be very aware because the goddess of tea resides there. The goddess of tea -- then why not the goddess of smoking? The nicotine is the same in tea as in tobacco.

I have just instructed Laxmi to make a small temple for smoking here in the ashram. But you have to go very alert, aware, meditative! IF YOU CAN SMOKE MEDITATIVELY, IT IS PERFECTLY BEAUTIFUL. If it stops by being meditative, that too is perfectly beautiful. Life is sacred.

So don't teach a child Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism. At the most, give him a milieu, if you love him, so that he can grow a sensitivity towards what religion is in its essence, in its purity. Don't teach him about so many flowers, just let him become sensitive to the fragrance of it -- that will do. THAT is baptism