Prejudice (Bias) and Right View

Tara & Luna

Tara:

I witnessed an online storm.

It started when one commenter shared their opinion under a video, only for another user to immediately launch a personal attack. Before long, more and more people jumped in, forming two sharply polarized camps. Fierce accusations, insults, slander, and attacks flooded the comment section, growing increasingly vicious.

What triggered all of this was, ironically, the video's content—creating a striking parallel and echo between the footage and the comment war below.

The creator had encountered a few young strangers dressed in exaggerated 1970s punk style on the street and decided to document a full day spent with them. Drawn in by their dramatic, unconventional appearance, I open the website out of curiosity. From the creator’s perspective, I experienced their entire day and, at the same time, became aware of the constant shifts within myself.

Heavy, vivid makeup; bizarre, unconventional outfits.

My first instinctive reaction was to frown. In that split second, a complicated, subtle mix of emotions surged up: alarm, disgust, and perhaps even a trace of disdain, even though I didn’t know them at all.

I thought to myself, "If I passed a group like this on the street in real life, I’d probably lower my head and give them a wide berth." Yet the internet grants us the privilege of staring openly at others without consequence—and I quickly felt ashamed of myself for it.

Their first activity was painting a graffiti wall in an abandoned rural factory. The camera shifted from city streets to a country path. The group walked quietly and considerately along the muddy road; the slightly older man leading them turned several times to gently remind everyone not to step on the vegetables the farmers had planted by the roadside. When they reached the empty building, they began spraying paint on the walls—anime portraits, animal runes, and a black horse. The images were vivid and meticulously done, delivering a powerful visual impact. Several dilapidated walls seemed to have been suddenly brought back to life.

I found myself genuinely admiring their talent, respect replacing my earlier prejudice in an instant.

At dinnertime, the creator, as he did every day, offered to treat everyone to a meal as compensation for documenting their day. The leader politely declined and instead invited the creator to eat at their home. The camera cut to their house: tidy and clean, with walls covered in neatly arranged framed artwork and tall display cabinets filled with varied crafts and small sculptures. The food they prepared was far from careless, colourful, steaming, and mouthwatering just to look at. In those few short scenes, I could feel something of their passion, their genuine love for life.

Everyone sat around the table laughing and talking, the atmosphere warm and relaxed. In conversation, it came out that they were tattoo artists. When the creator asked one girl (with twin ponytails) how she felt about people’s attitudes toward tattoos, she said calmly:

"Prejudice of all kinds exists in society. Some people see a tattoo and immediately think, 'This person must be bad,’ and reject or even attack them. But those judgments aren’t necessarily true, and they certainly don’t represent everyone. At the same time, people without tattoos aren’t automatically good people either."

Hearing that, I felt another wave of shame. I finally had to face it: the initial prejudice I felt it had simply been a product of imagined fear, rooted in a certain degree of ignorance.

At the moment of parting, the leader said he wanted to give the creator a small keepsake. In the night, he pulled a palm-sized sketchbook from his bag, tore out one page, and handed it over. On it was a cute version of a group portrait of all six of them. The video ended there.

A sense of comfort and deep feeling settled over me.

Then I opened the comment section—and saw the bitter divide.

One person wrote, "I hope my children never see this kind of video. These people are disgusting and will corrupt the youth.” Someone replied, "I hope people like you stop existing in this world.” Another said, "So cool. I envy their talent and vitality." Yet another: "What a pity they didn’t choose the right path and instead embraced worthless Western artistic garbage …"

A group of complete strangers managed to stir up profound, stubborn hatred toward one another. It was a vivid, living illustration of the very theme of prejudice.

Jumping to conclusions, overgeneralizing, and judging others based on incomplete information, false assumptions, or mere subjective emotion—that is prejudice.

We know nothing about why a person has become who they are, what past they’ve lived through, or what they’ve endured—yet in a single moment, we slap a label on them.

Prejudice often springs from the narrowness of our own minds, from blind projection.

Some people didn’t even watch the whole video. Merely seeing a certain stylized appearance or outfit was enough for them to prejudge that everyone dressed that way must possess certain undesirable qualities, and from there to direct hostility and negativity toward them. Others, driven by anger or wounded feelings, responded with equally extreme, attacking forms of "defence."

And so conflict is born.

We fight with outsiders, we fight with the world, yet we refuse to look at our own shortcomings.

We don’t want to face them, and often we cannot bear to. Instead, we compete to prove that we are right, pure, innocent, and honest. But harm is frequently born precisely from honest ignorance and prejudice.

Perhaps all it takes to dissolve prejudice is one real encounter, one moment of truly seeing.

When we sit down and actually observe without filters the people we’ve labelled, we often discover that they are simply ordinary people trying to live their lives, just like us. And those seemingly unbreakable prejudices usually turn out to be surprisingly fragile when met with genuine smiles.

Because in the end, what every person longs for is to be seen, not as a label, not as a category, but as a complete, real human being.

Luna:

In Buddhism, the eight sufferings (or eight kinds of dukkha/suffering) are pains that all sentient beings must experience, regardless of their status, identity, or wealth.

They are:

Birth

Aging

Illness

Death

Separation from what is loved (love and parting)

Meeting with what is disliked (resentment and association)

Not getting what one seeks (seeking but not obtaining)

The suffering of the five aggregates (clinging to the five skandhas/taking up the five heaps)

These sufferings arise from greed, hatred, and delusion (the three poisons).

Beings, due to ignorance (delusion / avidyā ), mistake inherently impermanent and constantly changing phenomena for something permanent and unchanging.

This distorted way of viewing oneself and the world is “delusion/ignorance.”

Through karma and habitual tendencies, we assign ourselves (and are assigned/identify with) a fixed, unchanging identity and thus this “I” comes into existence.

Prejudice exists because we want certain views, understandings, or perceptions to be eternal; to have valid reasons for existing; to be “correct.”

But no matter the viewpoint, once it solidifies into a fixed “seeing,” greed and hatred follow along — completing the full structure of prejudice. This leads to the suffering of not obtaining what we love, the suffering of inevitably encountering people and things we detest, and the suffering of desiring things that remain out of reach.

While writing this, I reflected on everything I “love” and “depend on”: my family, my partner, my pets, my career, my hobbies, my beliefs, my feelings, my tastes, my worries, my hopes, my expectations, my aversions. None of them will last forever, just as my youth and body will fade away.

Because they are impermanent, whether I choose to ignore them now or desperately try to force them to endure has no real meaning.

What I can do is to see clearly, as it is, whatever appears in the present moment without labelling it, and without letting fear arise because of it.

Not fearing because of attachment/love, nor fearing because of aversion/dislike.

Every present moment has no fixed “template” to follow.

We can learn from history and past patterns, make inferences — but ultimately, we must act in the here-and-now according to what actually presents itself. If someone, out of fear or dependency, refuses to take responsibility for their own life (body, speech, mind), they remain trapped in this endless cycling stream.

For example, when sick, an experienced doctor prescribes based on years of practice and observation. A newly graduated doctor relies mainly on textbook knowledge (or observes as an intern at first). Through repeated practice, the novice gradually gains experience, treats patients more precisely, and may even innovate in their field.

But if the beginner stubbornly applies only textbook rules without adding personal observation and understanding of each unique patient — for instance, assuming that because the instructions say "half a pill for children under 12, one pill for adults," they ignore that some adults may have developed tolerance and need two pills, or others are hypersensitive and need only half — this rigid approach can worsen the illness or delay proper treatment.

Throughout our growth, countless different views and opinions are fed into our cognitive system.

Through collective and individual choices, some become fixed patterns of thought and are simultaneously labelled "correct."

A common thread in these solidified views is that they make us feel superior.

This feeling of superiority is different from genuine joy; I will expand on that in later writings.

These "correct" views must be defended and upheld to maintain a fixed outcome or purpose, thereby creating opposition: "evil" versus "righteousness/justice."

For example, we know that harming others — causing anyone physical or mental pain — is not "correct"; "do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself."

Yet if we insert contexts like "traitors" or "enemy combatants under interrogation," the "righteous side" may justify torture or punishment in the name of "questioning" or "justice." Thus, causing physical and mental suffering becomes an acceptable process.

So, above these actions lies a layer of "purpose." These purposes are defined by culture, group identity, and prevailing opinions. They create division, which is then further subdivided into deeper layers of “correct” versus "wrong/evil."

The "correct" described above differs from the “right” (sammā) in the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path.

The worldly "correct" arises in contrast to "evil" — it exists because it aligns with our (collective) needs and the current “side” we occupy, along with its expectations.

For instance, certain substances have been banned in one era and legalized in another.

Due to differences in time, cognition, and development across groups and the varying personal growth within those groups, no collective can fully "control" or balance these relativities. These differences continue to fracture us further.

"Today I want custard buns, tomorrow croissants."

Personal views fragment into many layers. In modern society, most people remain stuck at the level of treating feelings as true knowledge.

"Because I feel it’s correct, therefore it is correct."

"Because everyone chooses it and says it’s correct, therefore it is correct."

Most people, needing to maintain their "correctness," cannot think independently.

They wear the invisible cloak of "rightness" — full of leaks and attachments.

They are caught in samsara, chasing worldly approval, pleasure, and what they perceive as goodness and beauty.

The "right" in the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path is not this. It arises from seeing things as they truly are (yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana). Without beautifying, without uglifying, without any deviation. Like a clear mirror reflecting everything exactly as it is — without passing through any self-filter.

It is called “stainless” (anāsava) because it does not start from any "correct" viewpoint; it simply proceeds from seeing the true nature of things.

When we cling to fixed thoughts rooted in attachment and habit, whether from family, culture, or any group-defined truth or beauty, and those thoughts are challenged, the premise of "beauty/goodness" triggers defence and anger in us. We ourselves become the very thing we did not want to become.

Covering up, cycling again.

Someone might object: "What about truly evil people in society? Those actively harming others? Shouldn’t we stop them?"

Even granting that premise, recall the earlier one: What if the person harming others believes they are punishing what they see as evil?

Those committing "evil" acts are almost always convinced within their own cognition that they are doing what is "correct." No matter how absurd it appears to us, they are fighting for what they grasp as "right", perhaps purely from feeling ("it feels good/beautiful/correct/what I need right now/what I deserve").

They are tightly bound by the chain of ignorance.

This does not mean we should deny all views.

It means we have the choice to transcend them through right view, illuminating every area of clinging and seeing everything in its original nature: all is impermanent.

From ancient times to now, when has war ever truly ceased?

We must begin choosing not to live bound by any prejudice masked as "rightness" or "beauty" in how we live and treat others.

We must cultivate right view.