- Neither Defiled Nor Immaculate

We always like to make contrasts, such as, this is good, that is bad, she is pretty, and she is unpleasant, defiled or immaculate, dirty or pure, intelligent or silly.

All these are concepts in our mind. These dualities are not entities but discriminative judgements. Nothing is bad (evil), only our judgement makes it so.

Likewise the notion of what is good. Describing the world as fundamentally good or fundamentally bad (evil) is a choice that reflects personal values – it does not change the facts. A classic example is how advertising agencies try to change consumers’ perception of the products they market into ‘original” and “new” versions.

In fact, the contents are the same, except for the packaging. Similarly, we try to label things into likes and dislikes. When something grows, there will be something that will decay. In the same way, when something no longer exists, there will be new things that will emerge to replace them. This is the balance of things.

In Dhamma terms; form is emptiness and emptiness is form; things are in a state of constant flux. A beautiful rose we have carefully cut and put in a vase is immaculate and beautiful. It smells fragrant too, so pure and fresh. The smell from the trash bin in our homes or offices is appalling when it is filled with discarded flower from our vases.

What was once so beautiful and prized, these discarded flowers are now not worth even a second look in the trash bin. If we were to look at the discarded stalk of rose with insight, we will only learn the nature of impermanence, but we also see the usefulness of all things in different light.

With understanding and ingenuity, we can see garbage as useful things.

With understanding we can see in the garbage the beautiful rose for it is the nature of things that without the rose, there will not be garbage; and without garbage we will not have the rose.

New roses will grow from the compost of decaying plants and roses. The garbage is as precious as the rose. Both the rose and the garbage are equal in status, one leading to the next in an unending cycle.

If we reflect and are mindful, we can see the Dhamma arising subtly in all our everyday encounters, as we see from this example of this discarded rose.