Once, a young monk who was proud of his pure birth and disciplined life sat by the river with the Buddha. Just then, seeing a low-caste woman coming to fill her pot, he stepped
back, refusing even to let her shadow touch him.
The Buddha asked gently, “Monk, which is purer: the water in the river or the pot that carries it?”
“The water, Lord,” the monk replied.
“Then why judge the pot and forget the water that fills us all?”
In that moment, realising that his eyes had been veiled by birth and status, the monk’s pride dissolved.
We are that monk. Before a word is spoken, the mind silently draws its lines. A face, an accent, a name, skin colour—something inside instantly decides: friend or foe, safe or suspect, competent or lacking. We call it intuition. The sages call it unfinished seeing.
This unfinished seeing has deep evolutionary roots. Instant judgments based on familiar patterns helped our species survive for millions of years—yet these same shortcuts cut us short in today’s complex, interdependent world, shaping judgments that divide more than they protect.
In our country today, a fluent English accent is mistaken for intelligence and a darker skin tone for lower status. A village address lowers one’s rank; a metro pin code raises it. Surnames trigger assumptions about caste, competence and character. None of this arises from malice—it operates beneath awareness, yet its effects are deeply consequential.
Behavioural economists have documented the “beauty premium”: people perceived as attractive are hired faster, trusted sooner, forgiven more readily, and often paid significantly more over a lifetime. If something as fleeting as appearance can bend a life’s path so sharply, what quiet storms do our deeper filters—caste, colour, creed, region, gender—unleash without our noticing?
Why does bias feel so convincing? Because it arrives before reflection does. The mind instinctively sorts stimuli as good or bad, strong or weak, active or passive. What feels like intuition is often this ancient mechanism: efficient, but far from infallible.
Decision scientist Gary Klein explains that intuition is not mystical but pattern recognition. It is reliable in domains where we have spent years learning the terrain, yet dangerously unreliable in situations our distant ancestors never encountered. In such situations, intuition is often bias wearing a confident mask.
Consider the workplace. Many organisations reward fluency over depth, confidence over reflection. As author Susan Cain has shown, the most creative people are often introverts who speak less, yet quieter minds are overlooked while louder ones are mistaken for leadership. Intuition feels right in the moment, but its long shadow shapes careers.
In the classic 1968 Rosenthal-Jacobson Pygmalion effect study, when teachers were told certain students would “bloom”, they indeed saw them doing so.Expectations did not merely predict performance; they helped produce it. Likewise, negative expectations can shrink people’s potential.
As Kabir so wisely lamented:
The lane of love is so narrow; there is room only for One.
Yet we crowd it with a thousand imaginary others.
(Here, the “One” Kabir speaks of is the undivided Self beneath all our labels and divisions.)
Four Gentle Reminders
1. Bias speaks even when we feel innocent
The speaker feels nothing unusual; the receiver feels a subtle drop in warmth. Tone, timing, the flicker of an eye—all these quietly reveal who is considered one’s own and who is kept at the edge.
2. We assume others must learn from us
When someone’s way differs, the mind whispers: They should be more like me. Rarely does it ask: What truth might their way reveal?
3. The unconscious becomes choice only when touched by light
Bias thrives in darkness. Freedom begins when we replay our own behaviour from the other person’s perspective. If I stood in their place, would my words have felt like sunlight—or shade?
4. Compassion is the only real counter-bias
Every wound points to a thorn within us—one that silently wounds others as it once wounded us. Meeting hurt with understanding—for others and for ourselves—is the alchemy that dissolves separation.
A Few Gentle Daily Practices
Watch the first ripple: Notice how your warmth rises or falls when you meet different people—without self-judgment.
Borrow their eyes: After an interaction, ask quietly, “How would my tone, my silence, my expression have landed with them?”
Offer warmth deliberately: Let every thank you carry real presence.
Incline towards wonder: Before correcting another, ask, “What might I still have to learn here?”
The Gift We Offer Tomorrow
We will often forget these lessons; I often do. Yet each return to awareness plants an invisible seed.
Our ancestors survived by drawing circles that kept “the others” outside. Our children will thrive when those circles dissolve, and we recognise that the same river fills every pot.
When curiosity replaces judgment and compassion softens certainty, we do more than grow. We strengthen the moral fabric of our workplaces and institutions, and help birth a world that sees with the eyes of the soul, a world in which every pot, at last, mirrors the same moon.
