AddictioN

To me transcendence comes out of your experience. You see the futility of something and the addiction drops. Then once in a while, just for a change, if you want to smoke I don't see any harm; if you want to make love I don't see any harm. The harm is in the addiction -- the harm is not in the act. And transcendence is not concerned with the act; transcendence is concerned with the addiction. To be addicted is bad. It gives you a kind of dependence. And all addictions are bad. There are no good addictions -- addiction as such is bad. Work is good but it should not become an addiction. Many people have made their work like a drug so they can forget themselves in their work -- just like a drunkard forgetting himself in alcohol. The chewing gum keeps them engaged, and that's how cigarettes keep them engaged. That's how people go on gossiping with each other. That keeps them engaged. Nobody bothers whether it is true or false, that is not the point. The question is: How to keep engaged and away from yourself? So the workaholics are against meditation. Every addiction is going to prevent you from becoming a meditator. All addictions have to be dropped. But to be total in your work is a totally different thing. To be total in your work is not addiction, it is a kind of meditation. When you are totally in your work, your work has a possibility of perfection, you will have a joy arising out of a perfect work. A very strange thing about addiction is that if you have the drug, it is nothing; if you don't have it, you are missing. You never think what you are missing because when you have it, it is nothing. Each time you have it you feel that it is just a futile effort, nothing comes out of it. You don't move a single inch in evolution. You just jump for a moment in the air and with a thump you fall back on the ground. Addiction has to be dropped only when it makes you unconscious. Alcoholics are told to drop the addiction, but here my teaching is of consciousness -- be addicted to it more and more. This is what addiction means: if you do it, nothing is gained; if you don't do it, you feel that something is missing. This is what a smoker feels. If he smokes, he knows nothing is gained. He is doing something silly, just a stupid thing -- taking smoke in and throwing it out.