No Time Like the Present by Jack Kornfield

Author:Jack Kornfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

Prejudice and Perspective

Nobel Prize–winning researchers David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel demonstrated how powerful perceptual conditioning can be in a study in which newborn kittens were divided into three groups, each placed in a different environment during the critical few days when they were opening their eyes and sight was developing. The first group was placed in a white box painted with horizontal black stripes, the second in a white box with vertical black stripes, and the third in a pure white box. The imprinting of those first days stayed with the kittens for life. Those raised in a world with only horizontal stripes could not properly see anything vertical. They routinely ran into chair and table legs, which they literally could not perceive. The kittens raised in a vertical world could not see horizontal lines. The kittens raised in an all-white world were even more disoriented and had difficulty moving around any object correctly.

Depending on your perspective, you can see a cow as a milk producer, as meat, as leather, as a mother, an ungulate, a farm animal, a Hindu holy being, or a living mystery. If you see a cow only as meat or as an investment, a great deal is lost from your perception. The same is true with people, with cultures, in every circumstance of life. You can see, caught by your desires and opinions, or you can look with new eyes and experience the freedom that is patiently waiting for you. What a joy to meet the world with an open mind. It’s a two-way gift—a gift of freedom to you and a blessing to others.

Yet there is also pain in seeing clearly. We have ignored some areas of life in order to avoid being in conflict or feeling overwhelmed. Turning away can hide loss, injustice, addiction, superficiality, intolerance. To see clearly takes courage. When Ram Dass taught a class on compassion and service in Oakland, California, he asked the students to pay attention to their responses to the suffering around them. One woman reported that she had given money to a neighborhood homeless man every time she passed him for months, but she never looked too closely. Now she realized why: “If I ever really look in his eyes, I’m afraid the next thing I know he will be sleeping on my living room couch.”

You don’t have to bring the homeless and all the world’s suffering into your home, but you do have to learn to see them clearly and hold them in your heart. Over time this woman became an ally to her neighbor, this homeless man, and her care and charity changed both of their lives. You have to be tender with the wounds and traumas of the world, and of your own life. Opening your heart slowly, gently, carefully, you can listen to the way things really are with interest and care, and see in a way that is curious, fresh, and kind.

An open mind allows the vibrancy of living in the moment.

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