“You listen,” said the Master, “not to discover, but to find something that confirms your own thoughts. You argue, not to find the truth, but to vindicate your thinking.”
And he told of a king who, passing through a small town, saw indications of amazing marksmanship everywhere. Trees and barns and fences had circles painted on them with a bullet hole in the exact centre. He asked to see this unusual marksman. It turned out to be a ten-year-old child.
“This is incredible,” said the king in wonder. “How in the world do you do it?”
“Easy as pie,” was the answer. “I shoot first and draw the circles later.”
“So you get your conclusions first and build your premises around them later,” said the Master. “Isn’t that the way you manage to hold on to your religion and to your ideology?”
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“All human beings are about equally good or bad,” said the Master, who hated to use those labels.
“How can you put a saint on an equal footing with a sinner?” protested a disciple.
“Because everyone is the same distance from the sun. Does it really lessen the distance if you live on top of a skyscraper?”
— Anthony de Mello
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