According to Osho, smoking isn’t a sin; only unawareness is. It may be unhealthy or foolish, but if you remain a witness, awareness transforms the act. The real problem is habit: chain‑smoking makes you a slave, closes you to life’s changing moments, and replaces free, conscious response with mechanical repetition. No act is inherently sinful; what matters is awareness and inner freedom.
Smoking isn’t a sin; the real trouble is letting any habit, like chain‑smoking, run you—stay aware so you choose what you do.
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…
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, your satsang is nothing less than heaven for me. It hurts deeply to be away from you. After this life I have not the slightest desire to be born again. But I make hundreds of mistakes. Please shower your compassion and guide me!
I don’t tell you, “If you smoke, stop.” I don’t—because that has been said to you so much and you still haven’t stopped. The sadhus and saints kept saying it till they died, and you did not stop. What is the point of my repeating it? Those who keep repeating it—I take them to be unintelligent. So many kept repeating and people didn’t listen; then there is a flaw in the very approach. Perhaps the root cause of smoking has never been understood; people just go on repeating empty words. Someone says, “Don’t smoke—you’ll get tuberculosis.” But he takes it for granted that you are afraid of TB. Who is afraid! People say, “When it happens, we’ll see. There is medicine, treatment.” And if you look into a book, you will read that if a man smokes twelve cigarettes a day for twenty years, then he may get TB. Who…
Question: Second question: Osho, can lifelong habits be dropped easily? First, be sure what your ‘habit’ is. Ninety-nine out of a hundred are utterly harmless. Needlessly the sadhus and mahatmas make a fuss about them. Someone drinks tea and thinks he’s committing a great sin. What sin? You sip your tea—who is harmed? Tea is thoroughly vegetarian. No harm at all. A little nicotine—no sin in that either. It warms the body a bit, gives a little zest—nothing wrong; a bit of zest is good, it helps you engage in work. But no! In Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram, tea was sin—except for one person: Rajaji alone had the right to tea, being the in-law. Rules cannot apply to the in-law; one must keep in-lawly courtesy—so he had an exemption. For the rest, tea was sin. Once a young man was caught making tea in secret. A scandal in the ashram.
Osho, yesterday you told the story of Saint Peter and the three women. Please tell us what happened after that?
Saint Maharaj! Do use a little of your own intelligence. No story is ever told in full, because some trust must also be placed in your imagination—that you, too, can think a bit. You could have figured out for yourself what would happen next. The matter was so clear. My friend, what else could happen! What had to happen is exactly what happened. Saint Peter had barely dealt with those three women when three goddesses arrived. One had a white mouth-cloth tied over her face—she was a Jain nun. The second was a beautiful French model, and the third a Rajneesh sannyasin. Saint Peter first pointed toward the part below the French girl’s waist and asked, “What did you use this for?” Preening, the beauty replied, “I used it to revel with my eight wedded husbands and about a hundred and fifty lovers. I also used it to earn money…