09/06/2016
Mechanism #2: Abstention from the Four Forms of Bias
Bias may occur whenever two persons are together.
The Origin of Bias
Bias may occur whenever two persons are together. If we are not careful, bias can start from our mind. It will never happen if we have responsibility for our own human dignity because the true cause of bias is the untrained mind.
As stated earlier, those who have an untrained mind are generally narrow-minded. They do not reflect carefully before they act. They always do things shoddily and think only of their own benefit. These people are jealous and envious of others. Those of untrained mind generally are biased and have unethical thoughts.
If we are not careful, bias can start from our mind.
The narrow-minded tend to be self-centered in terms of receiving beneficial gains. For example, the hard-hearted father of a family may spend a large proportion of the household income for his personal consumption of liquor regardless of the financial needs of the other family members. In the same manner, the hard-hearted housewife spends the limited household income on her own dresses.
The hard-hearted ones can not make their households peaceful due to their bias. There is also the case of parents who share their love toward the children unequally. This is another common case of bias that always cause trouble to human families.
As stated earlier, those who have an untrained mind are generally narrow-minded.
The Harm of Bias
We have already seen how narrow-minded people can cause troubles when put in a position of power. Let us imagine that they take the leading position in the workplace such as governmental bureaus and departments. They will also bring troubles to the workplace, Not only the narrow-minded ones can make troubles from bias. The broad-minded can also cause troubles from bias if their minds are not broad enough to cover or take control of their workplace. For example, a person may seem to have a broad mind in the context of their family, but they may turn to be narrow-minded in the workplace or if they become mayor. Such a person thinks only of beneficial gain for the family, not of the village or district. As the extent of one’s thought is limited, bias will surely occur. He or she will be unable to develop the village to prosper.
Those who are broad-minded can be graded according to their virtues. A good village headman may not be able to take the position as a mayor or a governor because he will concentrate only on the benefit of his village not on the whole city or county. A good provincial governor may also have bias when he becomes the primeminister if he concentrates mainly on the beneficial gain of his own province. He is not broad-minded enough to take care of all people in the country.
Abroad-minded person may turn to out to be narrow-minded when taking control of a superior working position. This brings about the troubles from bias for the whole society, nation and religion.
We have already seen how narrow-minded people can cause troubles
All nations need a leader who has a broad mind. What the citizens of all nations need are good leaders who foresee the benefit to the whole country. Now we know that we need a good leader for our nation. But most of us do not know how to distinguish or judge if a person is virtuous. Most electoral candidates promote themselves as good persons, but they turn out to be different after they are elected. From this fact, we can conclude into four issues:
- Every human society needs virtuous people
- People fail to identify the qualities of virtuous people
- Nobody knows how to train train people to be virtuous
- People do not have enough tome to investigate the qualities of their political candidates
We can now conclude that the virtuous ones have awareness of responsibility
In order to arrive at the right solution, we need to study about qualities of virtuous people, how to train people to be virtuous, and the teaching on the four defilements of actions. We also need to have awareness of our and the others’ responsibility for human dignity. We can do so by implementing disciplines to our lives. By way of controlling our speech and action, we do not cause any social troubles with bias. Because we already know that bias is also the origin of corruption and, in addition causes social troubles, bias also results in damage to one’s reputation and peace of mind. Bias for the benefit of oneself, one’s family, and one’s cronies, yields only minimal happiness. Finally, they end up being reproved by the others. The National leader’s bias causes him to allocate limited resources unjustly among citizens because he will finally lose his reputation, dignity and credibility.
On the contrary, virtuous ones who have cultivated a broad mind and foresee the problems from injustice, try to control their actions and speech to be virtuous. They will make good progress and achieve fame, dignity and recognition as the Lord Buddha said in Singalovada Sutta that:
“The prestige of anyone who is biased by desire, hatred, ignorance or fear will be eclipsed like the waning moon. (But) the prestige of anyone who restrains themselves from being biased by desire, hatred, ignorance and fear will increase like the waxing moon.”
Those who have refined minds are free from bias.
Those who have refined minds are free from bias. They can expand their minds like the moon expanding its light to cover the world. It is strange but true that water can spread only on the Earth’s surface. However, in the form of vapour, which is more refined, it can pe*****te into rocks, air and the sky itself. In a similar way, our minds, can expand infinitely if refined. Such a mind will help us to have righteous consideration to understand all causality-this also bringing peace and happiness to control our speech and action to be free from defilements of actions by avoiding the four bias is the second quality of virtuous people. We can now conclude that the virtuous ones have awareness of responsibility towards human dignity both in oneself and others.
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