See the statue in the rags: people you look down on

When someone seems contemptible, recall the buddha statue wrapped in rotten rags that travellers pass by in disgust.

Pourquoi ça marche

In the seventh simile, travellers on a dangerous road walk past a bundle of rotten rags in disgust; only when a divinity has it opened does the buddha image inside receive the veneration it deserves. Zimmermann reads the message as: nobody, however contemptible they may appear, should be looked upon as such, because everyone has a nature deserving of veneration. The Ratnagotravibhāga names contempt for beings regarded as inferior as one of the faults the teaching is given to remove. Social psychology finds a parallel: people widely believe that others have a morally good “true self,” and being asked to consider an out-group member’s true self has been found to reduce bias in judgments and in giving.

Comment faire

1. Notice a moment of contempt — a person you have written off, dismissed or felt superior to.
2. Picture them as the bundle of rags on the road: everything you dislike is the cloth.
3. Ask what might be wrapped inside — not a story that excuses them, only the possibility of something you cannot currently see.
4. Notice whether your next words or actions toward them shift, even slightly.
5. If the person is harming you or others, keep the boundary exactly where it is; this practice changes how you see, not what you allow.

Données probantes

The simile and its interpretation are from Zimmermann’s study (p. 38); contempt for inferior beings as a fault the teaching addresses is from Ratnagotravibhāga I.156–157 as he discusses it (p. 82). Newman, Bloom and Knobe found that observers tend to see others’ true selves as fundamentally good, and a 2025 registered replication by Lee and Feldman supported their main findings. De Freitas and Cikara found that thinking about another person’s true self reduced intergroup bias in evaluations and in donations. These studies test a related everyday belief, not this practice. (mechanistic)

The research concerns a lay belief in a “true self,” which is not the same as buddha-nature and which many Buddhist thinkers would reject. The intergroup studies were brief experiments, and their effects outside the lab are unknown.

Sources

• Zimmermann, M. (2002). A Buddha Within: The Tathāgatagarbhasūtra — The Earliest Exposition of the Buddha-Nature Teaching in India. Bibliotheca Philologica et Philosophica Buddhica VI. Tokyo: International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University (open-access edition).
• Newman, G. E., Bloom, P., & Knobe, J. (2014). Value judgments and the true self. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(2), 203–216.
• Lee, S. C., & Feldman, G. (2025). Revisiting the link between true-self and morality: Replication and extension Registered Report of Newman, Bloom, and Knobe (2014) Studies 1 and 2. Royal Society Open Science, 12(6).
• De Freitas, J., & Cikara, M. (2018). Deep down my enemy is good: Thinking about the true self reduces intergroup bias. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 74, 307–316.

Erreur fréquente

Treating someone’s hidden goodness as a reason to tolerate ongoing harm — seeing the statue does not mean staying on the road with someone who is hurting you; that slide is one of the forms of spiritual bypassing.