Summary

Wright used to pull out plantain weeds from his lawn, but was later able to see them as beautiful on his meditation retreat. He realized that there were no specific criteria, that he could see, that differentiated weeds from other plants. This, he says, was his first understanding of Buddhist emptiness. The plantain weed has no bad essence— are people the same way?

From an evolutionary standpoint, human beings should also give us good or bad feelings to influence our behavior and subsequent survival. In social psychology, scientists have learned that people can judge each other nonverbally, very quickly. In a specific situation, it may seem that someone who would stop and help out an injured person is a good person and someone who would walk by is a bad person. However, what influences whether or not one will stop for an...