In plain words
So, for the person who has recognised the principle of who ‘I’ is, the oneness of ‘I am’ in everything becomes easy for us to understand. So the sacred word ‘I’ holds good for the one Ātma alone. Since that Ātma is in all alike, equanimity comes easily. There is no difference at all in objects. The difference is the one in our desires and our thoughts; but an object always comes with just one kind of quality and one kind of taste. If such a judgment truly lay in the objects themselves, everyone would have to have the same feelings; it could never happen at all that one person feels a liking for that object and another a dislike. No one at all has the authority to decide good and bad. Today people imagine that in deciding good and bad they hold some seat of authority. It is nothing but the first mark of Ajñāna. When one person likes a thing very much, that same thing is disliked by another. If such differences truly lay in the object itself, likes and dislikes could not arise, could they! If you ask where these likes and dislikes came from, the tastes within those people are themselves the root cause of it. A small example of this. We drink pure water that is sweet, cool and very tasty. We eat fruit that is sweet, lovely and most attractive. Not only do we regard this water and this fruit as pure and very dear, we drink them and eat them with trust. But within a few moments this fruit turns into excrement, and the water into urine. We regard the excrement and urine as bad, and the fruit and water as good; is this judgment really right? What we trusted as good, what we pronounced good, that same thing within a few moments we pronounce bad with our own mouth. We see it with these very eyes. Then, when we said, ‘It is good,’ was that true? When we said, ‘It is bad,’ was that true? Good and bad are only creations of our own sight; there is no authority at all to create good and bad in the object.