Life consists of sadness too. And sadness is also beautiful; it has its own depth, its own delicacy, its own deliciousness, its own taste. A man is poorer if he has not known sadness; he is impoverished, very much impoverished. His laughter will be shallow, his laughter will not have depth, because depth comes only through sadness. A man who knows sadness, if he laughs, his laughter will have depth. His laughter will have something of his sadness too, his laughter will be more colorful.

For Zen, man is the goal; man is the end unto himself. God is not something above humanity, God is something hidden within humanity. Man is carrying God in himself as a potentiality.

Small children smoking, and the mother is not aware that it is because the breast has been taken away. In all primitive communities a seven-year-old child, or even an eight or nine-year-old child, will continue breast-feeding. Then there is a satisfaction and smoking will not be so necessary. That's why in primitive communities men are not so much interested in women's breasts; there is no problem that somebody will attack them. Nobody looks at the breasts.

Chaung Tzu was one of the most natural men the world has seen. He has not given any discipline, he has not given any doctrine, he has not given any catechism. He has simply explained one thing: that if you can be natural and ordinary, just like the birds and trees, you will blossom, you will have your wings open in the vast sky.

Religion is consciousness-raising. It raises you higher than the problem, it gives you a bird's-eye view.

And through meditation comes wisdom - not through studying books, not through scriptures. Through scriptures one can become knowledgeable but no wise. and knowledgeable people are sad, they are bound to be sad because all their knowledge is borrowed. There can be no song in it.

It may be just one facet of your personality, or it may not even be a facet but only a pretension. You can show this false face with no problem when sometimes you meet on a sea beach, sometimes in a garden, sometimes under the moon and the stars, but when you really start living together then the reality starts surfacing. The real person is a hell and all that sweet talk that had happened under the stars becomes just lies.