Guilt is imposed by others on you. It is a strategy of the priests to exploit. It is a conspiracy between the priest and the politician to keep humanity in deep slavery forever. They create guilt in you, they create great fear of sin. They condemn you, they make you afraid, they poison your very roots with the idea of guilt. They destroy all possibilities of laughter, joy, celebration. Their condemnation is such that to laugh seems to be a sin, to be joyous means you are worldly.

But people find it very difficult to be a loving person, so they create a relationship - and befool that way that 'Now I am a loving person because I am in a relationship.' And the relationship may be just one of monopoly, possessiveness, exclusiveness.

Sinners live in a sort of hell, and saints imagine themselves in a sort of heaven. And the sage? - for him it is moksha, for him it is the absolute freedom. He is freed from all duality. The secret key, and the only key, is awareness.

[M]ental peace is not meditation. Meditation is the flight beyond the mind. It has nothing to do with mental peace.

Philosophy is speculation, Zen is participation. Participate in the night leaving, participate in the evening coming, participate in the stars and participate in the clouds; make participation your lifestyle and the whole existence becomes such a joy, such an ecstasy. You could not have dreamed of a better universe.

An intelligent man, a man who has a little meditative consciousness, can make his life a beautiful piece of art, can make it so full of love and full of music and full of poetry and full of dance that there are no limitations for it. Life is not hard. It is man's stupidity that makes it hard.

God is your very being. So the first thing is, don't think about enlightenment as a goal.