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are such a simple substitute; don't disturb people. When I see you smoking I feel sorry for you, not because you are smoking but because you have to smoke. I think about your worries, not about your smoking; that is nothing to be bothered about. I think about your anguish, your tension. I think that there must be something eating at your heart; otherwise why should you burn yourself with smoking? I never judge your smoking, that you are doing some wrong act. I see deeper. I see why you are smoking.
But no saint bothers about why you are smoking. For them smoking is a sin. In Mahatma Gandhi's ashram if somebody was found to be smoking he was immediately turned out in disgrace; he had fallen. And the poor fellow was simply trying to relax. In fact his smoking was an indication that the ashram was not relaxing, that it was not a place where people could relax. Instead, it was a place where people became more tense. In fact, all the ashrams make you more tense.
It is a strange dilemma: they make you more tense, more worried. This world is not enough for them; they bring in hell and heaven and all kinds of consequences that you will have to suffer. Rather than helping you to get out of your tense mind, they make your mind more tense -- and then you cannot smoke, then you cannot drink even tea or coffee; these are all prohibited because they are all relaxing.
A relaxed person may not need to smoke unless playfully, once in a while, sitting with friends, when everybody is smoking and he does not want to play the saint. I used to go to parties when I was in the university. It was a problem because the host was worried that everybody would be drinking and I might feel left out. Knowing it from many other previous experiences, I had to go to the host and say, "Don't be worried about me. You just give me Coca Cola as if I am also drinking with everybody."
But he would say, "They will think you are also drinking alcohol."
I said, "Let them think that, it is no problem. What is the problem? It simply shows I am also human. I want to participate with them, I don't want to be holier-than-thou. To me that attitude is ugly, that attitude is simply
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