How to stop chain-smoking?

Once  a chain-smoker asked Osho, "How toget rid of my smoking? Is it a sin to smoke? I feel so guilty, please help me!"

Osho said:
"You must be a deeply anxiety-ridden person, otherwise chain-smoking is not possible; chain-smoking is a by-product. You must be so concerned about a thousand and one disturbances inside, you must be carrying such a big load of worries on your heart, on your chest, that you don’t know how to forget them. Smoking at least helps you to forget about them.

The hypnotists have discovered a fundamental law; they call it the Law of Reverse Effect. If you try hard to do something without understanding the fundamentals, just the opposite will be the result. Try to avoid anything with great effort and it becomes a hypnotic force, it hypnotizes you. It becomes like a magnet. You cannot avoid it.

Be relaxed. Don’t try hard, because it is through relaxation that you can become aware, not by trying hard. Be calm, quiet, silent.

Smoke as much as you want to smoke. It is not a sin in the first place. I give you a guarantee – I will be responsible. If you meet god on Judgment Day you can just tell him that this fellow is responsible. So don’t be worried about sin. Relax and don’t try to drop it with effort. No, that is not going to help.

This is my suggestion: smoke as much as you want to smoke – just smoke meditatively. If Zen people can drink tea meditatively, why can’t you smoke meditatively? In fact, tea contains a stimulant, the same as cigarettes contain; there is not much difference. Smoke meditatively, make it a ceremony.

Make a smoking temple
Try it. Make a small corner in your house just for smoking – a small temple dedicated to the god of smoking. First bow down to your cigarette packet. Have a little chit-chat. Talk to the cigarettes. Inquire, “How are you?” And then take a cigarette out as slowly as you can, because only if you take it very slowly will you be aware. Don’t do it in a mechanical way, as you always do. Then tap the cigarette on the packet very slowly and for as long as you want. There is no hurry. Then take the lighter, bow down to the lighter. These are great gods! Light is god, so why not the lighter?

Then start smoking very slowly, just like vipassana. You smoke naturally – very slowly, no hurry. If it is a sin you are in a hurry; you want to finish it as soon as possible. If it is a sin you don’t want to look at it. You go on reading the newspaper and you go on smoking. Who wants to look at a sin? But it is not a sin, so watch it – watch each of your acts.

Divide your acts into small fragments so you can move very slowly. You will be surprised: by watching your smoking, slowly, slowly smoking will become less and less. And one day suddenly, it is gone. You have not made any effort. It has dropped of its own accord, because by becoming aware of a dead pattern, a routine, a mechanical habit, you have released a new energy of consciousness in you. Only that energy can help you; nothing else will ever help.

And it is not only so with smoking, it is so with everything else in life. Don’t try too hard to change yourself. That leaves scars. Even if you change, your change will remain superficial. You will have to find a substitute somewhere, otherwise you will feel empty.

When something withers away of its own accord – because you have become so silently aware of the stupidity of it that no effort is needed – when it simply falls like a dead leaf falling from a tree, it leaves no scar behind and it leaves no ego behind.

If you drop something by effort, it creates great ego. You start thinking, “Now I am a very virtuous man because I don’t smoke.” That’s how your virtuous men are. Somebody does not smoke, somebody does not drink, somebody eats only once a day, somebody does not eat in the night, somebody has even stopped drinking water in the night...and they are all great saints!

Not-smoking is not virtue, smoking is not sin; awareness is virtue, unawareness is sin. The same law is applicable to your whole life.

Excerpted from Ah, This!