"The prayer can change you, but from where will the prayer come? It will come from you. If you are sick, your prayer is going to be sick.

"Mulla Nasruddin once applied for a job. In the application he mentioned many qualifications. He said, 'I stood first in my university, and I was offered the vice-presidency of a national bank. I refused because I am not interested in money. I am an honest man, a true man. I have no greed, I'm not bothered about the salary; whatsoever you give me will be okay. And I love work – sixty-five hours per week.'

"When the superintendent who was taking his interview looked at his application, he was surprised and said, 'Lordy! Don't you have any weaknesses?'

"Nasruddin said, 'Only one: I am a liar!'

"But that one covers all. No need to have any other weakness, one is enough. There are not many weaknesses in you, you have only one weakness; out of that one all are born. And you have to remember your weakness, because it is going to follow you wherever you go like a shadow; whatsoever you do, it is going to color it.

"The basic thing in religion is not what to do, the basic thing is what to be. 'Being' means your innermost core, 'doing' means your surface activities on the circumference. Doing means your relationship with others, with the outer world, and being means you as you are, unrelated, as you are within.

"You can be without doing anything, but you cannot be without the being. Doing is secondary, dispensable. A man can remain inactive, not doing anything, but a man cannot be without being: so being is the essence. Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, they all talk about being; and the temples, churches, mosques, organizations, sects, the so-called gurus and teachers and priests all talk about doing. If you ask Jesus, he will talk about your being and how to transform it. If you ask the pope of the Vatican he will talk about what to do, about morality. Morality is concerned with doing, religion with being.

"This distinction has to be kept as clear as possible, because everything else depends on it."