"The very creativity is divine. It is not like a painter who is different from his painting. It is like a dancer who is one with his dance. God is one with his existence. God is his existence. In fact, to say 'God is' is tautological, it is a repetition, because 'God' means the same thing that 'is' means. God is isness. All that is divine.

"It is very difficult for the so-called religious to understand it because his whole trip depends on the distinction: this is good, this is bad, this has to be done and this has to be avoided. The marketplace has to be condemned, and one has to move into the Himalayas or into the monasteries.

"The ordinary religious mind depends on condemnation, it is an ego trip, so when you become ordinarily religious, you start having the feeling of 'holier than thou.' Because you live in a certain way – you eat certain things and you don't eat certain things, and you have a certain style to your life – you start feeling you are holier than others. A Catholic monk or a Jaina monk thinks he is very holy because he is doing certain things and he is avoiding certain things. His holiness consists of doing.

"The insistence of Zen is that doing is not important at all, what is important is being. You are not what you do. You are what you are. And by doing, you never change, but if your being changes, certainly your doing changes. It becomes totally different; it becomes suffused with a new light. A new quality, a new dimension opens to it. You can do the same thing without your being having gone through any transformation, and then it will be second, secondhand, then it will not be real.

"For example, Mahavira became naked. His nudeness comes out of the first principle; it is a flow from his innermost core. It is an innocence that has come to his life. You can become nude – there are thousands of Jaina monks down the centuries who have become nude – but it is an action. For Mahavira it was not an action; basically it was a change in his being."