"Because even if you try to be something else, it will be only phony.

"In this sense all the religions have committed a great crime against humanity, because they all want you to be saints, great saints. They have categories of austerities, they have categories of respectability. The so-called religions of the world are part of the same game that is being played in the marketplace, that is being played by the politicians. Everybody wants to have a position. He is ready to lose himself, to sell himself, for a position. That's what has happened, and everybody has lost his simplicity.

"I came first in the whole university in my post-graduate examinations. My grandfather was a very simple man…knowing nothing of Zen, but he was a man of Zen. When I told him that I got the gold medal for being the first in the whole university, he looked at me and he said, 'That simply means you were studying with fools; otherwise how could you manage to be first?' Rather than being happy, he was angry with me, 'Don't you feel ashamed?'

"I said 'My God, I was thinking that you would appreciate…'

"He said, 'I would have appreciated it if you had given the chance to somebody else, but you grabbed the gold medal yourself. This is very ungainly, ungraceful.'

"I said, 'You will be happy to know that I have not brought the gold medal home.'

"I had dropped it in the university well. I had told the vice-chancellor that it did not matter to me, and to prove it I threw it in the big well that supplied the water to the whole university. Everybody thought I was crazy. Even the vice-chancellor said, 'This is carrying the argument too far.'

"I said, 'It is not an argument. I'm simply telling you that I don't believe in a system of education which creates categories: first class, second class, third class. Everybody is just himself, this classification is a dangerous phenomenon.'

"My grandfather said, 'That is good, if you have thrown that gold medal. You did well. And never again do such a thing.'

"I said, 'I have done nothing. They simply gave it to me; it was not my fault."