I assume that this person is trying to separate a reaction to the person's unbeneficial actions, with holding on to a perception of the person as being a person who always does unbeneficial things, and this is important. Just as I was saying before about speech and making our own mistakes, when we recognize that somebody else does unbeneficial things and we recognize, "Wow they shouldn't do that" and so on, that is OK to do. To be objectively honest in the moment, to recognize what is unbeneficial and what is not, that is fine. But then later, do we keep that image of the person with us? The next time we see that person, do we automatically think to ourselves, "Oh, they are a person who does unbeneficial things," and write them off? So I believe this is what the person is referring to. How can we let go of that prejudice in the new moment, keeping the idea of what the person was in a previous moment.
Now if you look at me, you are going to see a person who has never drunken alcohol in his whole life. But when I was 18, 19, or 20, I got drunk sometimes. That may seem to be a confusing statement. When you look at me you see a person who has never drunken alcohol in his whole life, but when I was 18, 19, 20 I got drunk sometimes. This is exactly what you've got to do for yourself, and this is exactly what we have to do for other people. Who I am today is not someone who gets drunk, the person you are actually looking at is not someone who gets drunk. If somebody knew me in my college days and maybe got drunk together with me once or twice, if they knew me then and they hadn't met me at all for these 30-odd years and they meet me tomorrow, they may automatically think, "Ah great, Steve, let's go have a beer." And yet that's just not who I am. They can hold me and freeze me in that image of who I was over 30 years ago, but it's not who I am. So with anything that you did in your past that was unbeneficial in any way, are you still doing it today? Or can you say to yourself, "Well, I've not done that for five years. This is who I am today, I'm a person who doesn't do that. Five years ago I did it, but I'm not that person anymore."
The more we can reflect about ourselves in this way, then we can reflect in similar ways about everyone whom we meet. Somebody did something that was harmful to us five years ago. We meet them on the street tomorrow. Are we going to still hate them, are we going to hold onto who they were five years ago? Or can we be a bit open and think, "Oh, I wonder if this person's changed, I wonder if they're really a much better person?" The person you are today, compared to the person you were when you first started meditation, who would you rather be? Probably the person you are today. So you understand quite clearly that who you are today is not who you used to be. Now imagine that someone did something rotten to you five years ago, you haven't seen them all this time, and you meet them, and what's to say that for four and a half years they've been meditating, developing and changing. This is how we let go of having our inner prejudices and images of a person who did something unbeneficial before. What they do today might be different.
Now even though I've said all that, it doesn't mean we forget what people did. It doesn't mean that we just write it off and think that this is a brand new person. No, we want to remember what that person used to do, because chances are they're going to do it again. Because that's human nature, what a person does normally they do again and again and again. So we do want to keep in mind that, "This person might still do unbeneficial things, so I don't want to think that they're a perfect pure person automatically, yet I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and see what happens." Rosemary and I tend to think that most human beings change very little in a whole life. A lot of human beings change for the worse, but basically most human beings change very little. So if a person has never even tried to do any mental development at all, then they're possibly never going to change at all either. That's just a theory, but it seems to be quite real. In that sense, Rosemary and I never expect people to change much, but we hope that they will, that's where we balance our thoughts.