According to Osho, before trying to quit, question why you want to stop and drop all guilt: smoking is silly, but not a sin or crime. If your motive is mere longevity or borrowed morality, you’ll only repress yourself. Instead, understand what you want your health and life for; with clarity and joy, unnecessary habits often fall away naturally.
Don’t quit from guilt—find real meaning and joy, and smoking can lose its grip by itself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, I cannot drop the habit of chain-smoking. I have tried hard but I have failed always. Is it a sin to smoke?
Gurucharan, DON'T MAKE A MOUNTAIN OUT OF A MOLEHILL! Religious people are very skillful in doing that. Now, what are you really doing when you are smoking? Just taking some smoke inside your lungs and letting it out. It is a kind of PRANAYAMA -- filthy, dirty, but still a PRANAYAMA! You are doing yoga, in a stupid way. It is not sin. It may be foolish but it is not a sin, certainly. There is only one sin and that is unawareness, and only one virtue and that is awareness. Do whatsoever you are doing, but remain a witness to it, and immediately the quality of your doing is transformed. I will not tell you not to smoke; that you have tried. You must have been told by many so-called saints not to smoke: "Because if you smoke you will fall into hell." God is not so stupid as…
Question: BELOVED MASTER, I WANT TO GIVE UP SMOKING. WHAT DO YOU SAY ABOUT IT? For example, it may be that your mother's breast was taken away from you earlier than you wanted and it is just a substitute. To many people I have suggested -- and it has been of help to smokers -- I say, "If you really want to stop smoking, then start sucking your thumb." They say, "But that will look very stupid!" That is true... smoking looks as if you are doing something great! You are doing the same thing, in fact a little more harmful. Just sucking on your thumb is not harmful at all, but smoking IS harmful. But because everybody is smoking and it is an accepted thing and it seems to be a very grown-up thing....
Why is it that the habits I judge bad for me -- smoking, overeating etc, are the most persistent?
That will be. If you judge them bad they will be persistent because you are creating a relationship with them. To call anything bad is to create a relationship with it. And whenever you call a thing bad, why do you call it bad? You call it bad because it defeats you. It is powerful. You call it bad because you are impotent before it; and by name-calling nobody is helped. So the first thing to do is: stop judging! If you want to smoke -- smoke! Smoke meditatively, forget what others say about it. Smoking can be such a beautiful meditation. Don't fight with it, smoke meditatively, create perfect rings, and enjoy the whole thing. And suddenly one day you will find the need has disappeared. The whole thing looks so foolish. Not that you judge, because when you judge then it is either good or bad. When you…
Osho, I keep turning back to look at the past. It’s futile, yet the habit doesn’t drop. What could be the reason?
Even to a dry tree the vine clings. Support! No other support seems visible. Ahead, only darkness; within, only darkness. The one bright thing seems to be the line of the past along which you have come—this path that is over, that will never be again, that has already happened. You sit arranging these preserved blossoms, these dried flowers. You cling to them. The creeper has twined round a lifeless tree— how much the past coddles the unborn It’s all dead, a corpse. Sometimes it happens: a she-monkey goes on carrying her baby pressed to her chest. Even when the baby dies, she keeps carrying it. It takes days—only when it rots and starts to stink does she drop it in a fright. Otherwise she goes on clutching the corpse—old habit. The past is a corpse—gone, done. Dust. Ash; the ember is out. Don’t keep lying on this ash, don’t…
Beloved Osho, can a chain-smoker become meditative? I have smoked for twenty-five years, and I feel that in smoking I stop going deeply into meditation.. Still, I can't stop smoking. Can you tell me something about it?
They have always laughed but they have always come back and said, "It helps, and the number of cigarettes next day is less and it goes on becoming less." Perhaps it will take a few weeks, then the cigarettes will disappear. And once they have disappeared without your stopping them.... Your stopping is repression, and anything repressed will try to come up again with greater force, with vengeance. Never stop anything. Find the basic cause of it and try to work out some substitute which is not harmful. So the basic cause disappears -- the cigarette is only a symptom. So the first thing is, stop stopping it. The second thing is, get a good bottle, and don't be embarrassed. If you are embarrassed then use your own thumb. Your own thumb will not be that great, but it will help. And I have never seen anybody failing who has…