We tend to take everything for granted. We take the world around us for granted. We take ourselves for granted. This is the world of ordinary appearances. In this way, we make beings, other objects and ourselves as solid and concrete.

How things are, and how we are, are dependent on each other. In fact everything is dependent on everything else. In other words, it is a mistake to see us as solitary and apart from things and others. When we do, then there is a tendency to protect ourselves, to only consider and help ourselves.

To get a sense of how each being knows the world so relatively we can look at how science tells us different animals know the world. Dogs can only see in black, grey and white. They cannot see colour. Even though dogs and ourselves look at the same world it appears differently to each of us. Birds, we are told, can sense magnetic fields, see ultraviolet light, and hear deeper sounds than humans. Their world must appear very different from how we sense it. Of course, birds use this information for migration, but the point is that the world appears differently for different beings.