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Animals, plants, microorganisms—all are part of the cycle of life. Maintaining a suitable balance, they live a naturally regulated existence. People may choose to view this world either as a model of strong consuming weak, or of co-existence and mutual benefit. Either way, it is an arbitrary interpretation which causes wind and waves, brings about disorder and confusion.

Adults think the frog is deserving of pity, and feeling compassion for its death, despise the snake. This feeling may seem to be natural, just a matter of course, but is this what it really is?

One youth said, "If life is seen as a contest in which the strong consume the weak, the face of the earth becomes a hell of carnage and destruction. But it is unavoidable that the weak should be sacrificed so that the strong may live. That the strong win and survive and the weak die out is a rule of nature. After the passage of millions of years, the creatures now living on the earth have been victorious in the struggle for life. You could say that the survival of the fittest is a providence of nature."

Said a second youth, "That's how it appears to the winners, anyway. The way I see it, this world is one of co-existence and mutual benefit. At the foot of the grain in this field, clover, and so many varieties of grasses and weeds are living mutually beneficial lives. Ivy winds around the trees; moss and lichen live attached to the tree's trunk and branches. Ferns spread beneath the forest canopy. Birds and frogs, plants, insects, small animals, bacteria, fungi—all creatures perform essential roles and benefit from one another's existence."

A third spoke, "The earth is a world of the strong consuming the weak, and also one of co-existence. The stronger creatures take no more food than necessary; though they attack other creatures, the overall balance of nature is maintained. The providence of nature is an ironclad rule, preserving peace and order upon the earth."

Three people and three points of view. I met all three opinions with a flat denial.

The world itself never asks whether it is based upon a principle of competition or of cooperation. When seen from the relative perspective of the human intellect, there are those who are strong and there are those who are weak, there is large and there is small.

Now there is no one who doubts that this relative outlook exists, but if we were to suppose that the relativity of human perception is mistaken—for example, that there is no big and no small, no up or down—if we say there is no such standpoint at all, human values and judgment would collapse.

"In nature, the world of relativity does not exist."

"Isn't that way of seeing the world an empty flight of the imagination? In reality, there are large countries and small countries. If there is poverty and plenty, strong and weak, inevitably there will be disputes, and consequently, winners and losers. Couldn't you say, rather, that these relative perceptions and the resulting emotions are human and therefore natural, that they are a unique privilege of being human?"

Other animals fight but do not make war. If you say that making war, which depends upon ideas of strong and weak, is humanity's special "privilege," then life is a farce. Not knowing this farce to be a farce—there lies the human tragedy.

The ones who live peacefully in a world of no contradictions and no distinctions are infants. They perceive light and dark, strong and weak, but make no judgments. Even though the snake and the frog exist, the child has no understanding of strong and weak. The original joy of life is there, but the fear of death is yet to appear.

The love and hate which arise in the adult's eyes originally were not two separate things. They are the same thing as seen from the front and from the back. Love gives substance to hate. If you turn the coin of love over, it becomes hate. Only by penetrating to an absolute world of no aspects, is it possible to avoid becoming lost in the duality of the phenomenal world.

People distinguish between Self and