IF YOU HAVE ANY KIND OF IDEAS ABOUT A SAINT, they are going to be destroyed.

Here, at least, you will not be allowed to carry those ideas. I am an iconoclast: MY WHOLE EFFORT HERE IS TO DESTROY IDEALS, IDEAS, IDEOLOGIES. And that is the whole zen standpoint. Why? Because these ideas are the barriers. If you have a certain idea how a saint should be, then you don't know that A SAINT IS UNPREDICTABLE AND YOU CANNOT HAVE ANY IDEAS ABOUT HIM. All ideas will become a confinement -- and a saint worth the name would not like to be confined in any idea. He is freedom. Nobody can draw a line around him, that 'This is the place you should be, and don't go out of it.' If somebody allows that -- allows that you draw a line around him and make a definition and he will remain there -- then he is not a saint at all. Beware of him: he is there to deceive you. IF HE FOLLOWS YOUR IDEAS, HE IS GOING TO DECEIVE YOU. LOOK FOR A SAINT WHO WILL NOT BOTHER WHAT YOUR OPINION IS ABOUT HIM. Find out somebody who does not care what your definition of a saint is, and you will be benefited. A SAINT WHO FOLLOWS YOU AND YOUR IDEAS IS WORTHLESS. He is your follower. No saint -- no Christ, no Buddha, no Mahavira -- has ever been according to you. That's why they got into trouble. Jesus would not have been crucified if he was according to you. Neither would Mahavir have been stoned, thrown out of villages, whipped, beaten... if he was just following your idea of a saint. No, he was not following you. NO SAINT CAN FOLLOW YOUR IDEAS. The moment somebody starts following your ideas, he is not a saint. He does not know freedom -- he has not stumbled upon his inner freedom, he does not know who he is. He gets his ego from you and your ideas. THIS IS THE CRITERION TO JUDGE: if you see a man who goes on following a certain kind of ideology in his behavior... There is a Jaina monk, he follows the ideas of the Jainas. And there is a Catholic monk, he follows the ideas of Catholic Christians, he behaves accordingly. THESE ARE SLAVES, THESE ARE NOT REAL MEN. A REAL MAN CANNOT BE CONFINED, CANNOT BE IMPRISONED. I am not a saint in that way, that you can have some ideas about me. Forget about sainthood. Just look into me, just be here and have a taste of me.

DON'T CARRY ANY IDEAS -- I AM NOT GOING TO BE BOTHERED BY THEM. If you are shocked, that is your problem. And I am not in any way in any need to get any identity from you. SO WHAT YOU SAY DOES NOT MATTER. If you are here to learn something, learn it. And meanwhile you will have to go through many shocks. Those shocks are really processes of understanding; those shocks are processes of learning. IF YOU ARE COURAGEOUS, only then can you be here. Otherwise go and find some dummy-saint somewhere. OSHO Zen: The Path of Paradox Vol 2, Ch #2: Selling water by the river am in Buddha Hall