Habits

 

 

Let me emphasize the fact. You can do your prayer every day unconsciously; then your prayer is a sin. You can become addicted to your prayer. If you miss the prayer one day, the whole day you will feel something is wrong, something is missing, some gap. It is the same with smoking or with drinking; there is no difference in it. Your prayer has become a mechanical habit; it has become a master over you. It bosses you; you are just a servant, a slave to it. If you don't do it, it forces you to do it.

 

So it is not a question of smoking. You may be doing your Transcendental Meditation every day regularly, and it may be just the same. If the quality of unconsciousness is there, if mechanicalness is there, if it has become a fixed routine, if it has become a habit and you are a victim of the habit and you cannot put it aside, you are no more a master of yourself, then it is a sin. But its being a sin comes out of your unconsciousness, not out of the act itself.

 

No act is virtuous, no act is a sin. What consciousness is behind the act -- everything depends on that.

 

You say: I CANNOT DROP THE HABIT OF CHAIN-SMOKING.

 

I am less interested in your chain-smoking; I am more interested in your habit. Any habit that becomes a force, a dominating force over you, is a sin. One should live more in freedom. One should be able to do things not according to habits but according to the situations.

 

Life is continuously changing -- it is a flux -- and habits are stagnant. The more you are surrounded by habits, the more you are closed to life. You are not open, you don't have windows. You don't have any communication with life; you go on repeating your habits. They don't fit; they are not the right response to the situation, to the moment. They are always lagging behind, they are always falling short. That's the failure of your life.

 

So remember: I am against all kinds of habits. Good or bad is not the point; there is no good habit as such, there is no bad habit as such. Habits are all bad because habit means something unconscious has become a dominating factor in your life, has become decisive. You are no more the deciding factor. The response is not coming out of awareness but out of a pattern, structure, that you have learned in the past.

 

Two members of the Shalom Retirement Home, Blustein and Levin, were strolling past the home of Nelson Rockefeller.

 

"If I only had that man's millions," sighed Blustein, "I would be richer than he is."

 

"Don't be a dummy," said Levin. "If you had his millions you would be as rich as he is, not any richer."

 

"You are wrong," said Blustein, "don't forget -- I could give Hebrew lessons on the side!"

 

That's what he has been doing. Even if he becomes Nelson Rockefeller he will go on giving Hebrew lessons on the side. That's how people are living, just according to habits.

 

I have seen many rich people living very poor lives. Before they became rich their habits became settled -- and their habits became settled when they were poor. That's why you find so much miserliness in rich people; it comes from the habits that became ingrained in them when they were poor.

 

-Osho, "Ah, This!, #6, Q2"