 But you see you can't tell people that and just by telling get them to see it Justing in exactly this way you the people who know that the earth is flat Can't be reasoned with People who believe that the Bible is the literal word of God Absolutely impossible to reason with them at all because they know it is so so in the same way We tend to know That we are all separate poor little me and that we are in need of salvation or something And we know this or so and so somebody says well you are not really that you know that that feeling of separateness is an illusion Well, that's all very nice in theory, but I don't feel it. So what will you do? What will you do with the person who is convinced that the earth is flat? No way of reasoning with them if it's for some reason important That he discovered that the earth is round you've got to play a game with him. You want to play a trick on him? You tell him great the earth is flat. Let's go and look over the edge Wouldn't that be fun? Of course if we're going to look over the edge of the earth We must be very very careful that if we don't go around in circles or we'll never get to the edge So we've got to go along Consistently along a certain line of latitude westwards and then We're going to come to the edge of the earth just so long as we're consistent in other words in order to Convince a flat artist That the world is round you've got to make him act consistently on his own proposition and Go consistently westwards to find the edge of the world now it lasts when he by going Consistently westwards he comes back to the place where he started he's been convinced that the earth is at least cylindrical and He may believe you then take it on faith that if he goes along a line of longitude the same thing will happen But you see what you did was to make him persist in his folly Now that's the whole method of Zen to make people become Perfect