In this world, we categorize things, and we give things names. There is the animal kingdom, then there are the different species within the animal kingdom, and they all have different names. There is the kingdom that lives in the ocean, and the fish all have different names. Then there is the world of humans, and all the humans have different names. In some ways we are categorized the same as we categorize animals. Different parts of the world are categorized by names. There are the Asian countries. There are the African countries. There are the European countries. Then there are the subsets within each larger set. It gets all the way down to different religions, different nationalities, different tribes, sometimes even different neighborhoods. Often there are incredible conflicts in all of these situations.
In some countries, if a stranger visits that country he could not tell that there was a north and south. He could not tell that these people were at each others’ throats because they speak the same language, and they look the same. Yet there is a terrible animosity between them caused by various reasons, often that reason is religion, such as the Catholics and the Protestants in Ireland.
Man sees the world in different ways. Transcendent man sees a unity in existence. Non-transcendent man sees differences. He sees his own egocentric self as separate from every other person, and every other egocentric self. Sometimes, a group of egocentric people join clubs, these clubs are given names such as religions, and then they see this group as different than every other group. The point being that man sees differences and as long as man sees differences, man cannot become unified. As long as man equates things as ‘mine’ or ‘his’ or ‘ours’ and ‘theirs,’ there is constantly going to be conflicts and there is constantly going to be chaos.
Now, a lot of this stems from the nature of the mind, and the nature of desire. The mind, if you have watched it, and we should all watch our minds to get some idea of how it works, the mind is the critic. The mind sees things and it says, “Well, this is good and this is bad, and this is alright, but I shouldn’t go there, and it’s okay to go there, and I can do this, but I can’t do that.” Now, we wonder where did all these things come from? Well, they have been ingrained in us since we were children. Our mind has been taught likes and dislikes. These things are incredibly deep-rooted and very difficult to transcend. Bawa says, “That which you learn as a youth is like writing in stone. That which you learn later is like writing on water.” So, the things that are ingrained in us when we are young are things that we carry with us.
Now, when we are young and we are taught these things by our parents, and our parents’ friends, and our teachers, we do not think of these things as prejudices. We think of these things as truth, and herein lies the great difficulty. We are taught what we consider inherent truths when we are young, and in reality these things are not truths. What they are is the attempt to make prejudices legitimate, and we are taught by our parents and by our society how to legitimize prejudices, and how to legitimize differences. Somehow we, as an individual, need to overcome all of these legitimized differences that we hold as sacred within our being.
