The Rose Changes the Little Prince’s World
In this chapter, the famous rose finally appears. Until then, the Little Prince’s planet had only simple flowers: flowers with a single row of petals that occupied little space, bothered no one, bloomed in the morning, and disappeared by evening. One day, however, a seed blown in from somewhere begins to sprout. The Little Prince watches it closely, wondering whether it might be a new kind of baobab. On his tiny planet, an unchecked baobab can become a disaster capable of destroying the whole world.
The sprout soon stops growing and forms an enormous bud. The Little Prince senses that something miraculous is about to emerge. Inside her green chamber, the flower takes a long time choosing her colors and arranging every petal. She does not want to appear crumpled like a poppy, so she waits for the brightest sunlight. After all that preparation, she finally emerges, yawns as though she has just awakened, and asks to be forgiven for her disheveled appearance.
When the Little Prince exclaims, “You are so beautiful,” the rose does not modestly retreat. She boasts that she was born with the sun and immediately asks for breakfast. Startled, the Little Prince brings a watering can and gives her water. From then on, the rose torments him with her vanity and pride. She brags that her four thorns can protect her even from tigers. When he points out that there are no tigers on his planet and that tigers do not eat grass, she retorts, “I am not grass.” She says she detests drafts, demands a screen against the wind, and asks to be covered by a glass globe at night.
The rose speaks as though she has lived elsewhere and declares the Little Prince’s planet a dreadful place. Yet she arrived as a seed and knows nothing of other worlds. Embarrassed when her lie is exposed, she coughs to make him feel guilty. Although the Little Prince loves her, he becomes suspicious and unhappy because he is trapped by her words. Later, he confesses that he should have judged her by her actions instead. She filled his planet with fragrance and light, but he took her contradictory talk about thorns and screens too seriously. He failed to see the tenderness behind her clumsy tricks. He was too young to know how to love her.
The Rose Is a Lover and, More Broadly, Another Person
The rose can be read as a symbol of a woman. The story repeatedly calls the rose “she” and describes her preparation of beauty, vanity, and desire for protection. If the Little Prince is placed in the role of a man, it is easy to read the rose as a woman. Yet we do not have to restrict her to that meaning. More broadly, she is the first other being with whom the Little Prince must live. She is a friend, a stranger who has entered his planet, and someone different from himself.
In the preceding chapter, the Little Prince was so lonely that he watched the sunset dozens of times. With no one else present, he had no conflicts and few responsibilities. Once the rose appears, his planet becomes busy. He must water her, provide a windscreen and glass globe, talk with her, and endure disagreements. Living together brings a joy unavailable in solitude, but it also requires us to face the collision of two different worlds.
The Little Prince says he was too young to understand the rose. I read this as an encounter with a radically different being. Because I am a man, I cannot fully know a woman’s physical, mental, and social experience. I can listen, make an estimate, and imagine what an experience may feel like. But if I claim to know it with certainty, I am close to lying. The bodily conditions with which we are born and the experiences society gives us can be profoundly different.
We easily assume that the other person lives on the same planet as we do. In truth, each person sees the world from a private planet and a private cave.
In the preceding chapter, the Little Prince assumed that he could see a sunset simply by moving his chair, as he did on his own planet. Only later did he remember that on Earth he had to wait. We make the same mistake in conversation. We speak on the assumption that the other person shares our position and thinks and feels in the same manner. Yet we truly are different. Our experiences, parents, and environments differ. So do our vision, smell, taste, hearing, touch, bodies, and brains. When two people born in different places meet, it is natural for two worldviews to collide.
Difference Attracts Us, and Difference Makes Us Clash
When a man and a woman first meet, difference itself can be attractive. Under the influence of affection and many emotions, each person’s appealing qualities seem especially vivid. Once they begin living together, however, those same differences generate conflict. One cannot understand why the other speaks in a certain way or why spoken words and inner intentions do not appear to match. Even a trivial conversation about what to eat can go wrong: one person believes a choice has been stated clearly, while the other is indirectly expressing several wishes and possibilities. This pattern should not be imposed on every man and woman, but it does show that people can differ greatly in how they decide and communicate.
The Little Prince clung to the surface of the rose’s words. He failed to read the feeling hidden beneath them and finally fled because he could no longer endure the relationship. This is not unique to the Little Prince and his rose. It recurs in nearly every human relationship. The problem begins not with difference itself, but when we convert difference into error and evil.
A Society That Calls Difference Wrong, Bad, and Evil
People call something wrong merely because it is different. They label others bad, dirty, or corrupt for no reason beyond difference. Racism is the most obvious example. Skin color, appearance, culture, and origin are simply different, yet people attach every negative word they can find and discriminate. Religious difference is treated in the same way. People call the other side demonic and declare anyone who does not believe in their god to be evil.
Columbus reached the Americas while seeking a route to India. At first, he believed the people there were Indians, leaving behind names born of that mistake. The Europeans did not treat the Indigenous people—whose language and way of life differed from theirs—as equals. They enslaved people who had come out to welcome them and ruled through violence. Captives had also been enslaved in wars between European Christians and Muslims, and the same practice was extended across continents. Difference became an excuse not to treat human beings as human.
Do we, living in 2025, understand difference? In private life, do we accept that a spouse, parent, child, or friend is different from us? In society, how do we treat people of different races, religions, sexual orientations, classes, and ways of life? The principle behind an anti-discrimination law is an understanding of difference and tolerance toward it. Yet those who are not discriminated against easily ask, “What is the problem?” They fail to see the problem when the rich humiliate the poor, a majority condemns a minority as evil, or capitalists treat workers as a lower class.
A Society That Demands Uniformity and Forgives Only the Powerful for Being Different
Society demands common concepts, common goals, and uniform attitudes. People who think and act alike are easier to control. Ironically, those most readily forgiven for living differently are people with wealth and power. In modern capitalist society, money operates as force. The law may prohibit many kinds of violence, while violence inflicted through money is easily tolerated.
Consider the familiar television drama about a conglomerate chairman’s child born outside marriage. A society that presents monogamy as the universal rule nevertheless allows powerful people to maintain double lives in plain sight. It calls the open exchange of sex with many people illegal, but ambiguously tolerates a “sponsorship” in which one wealthy person effectively purchases another person’s life and sexuality over time. The wealthy and powerful are forgiven for departing from the rules, while the powerless are abused for being different. “How dare someone without money…” becomes the language of class. But when did wealth and power become anyone’s eternal possession? A person mistakes something temporarily held for a permanent self.
Institutions of Tolerance and Powers That Restrict Freedom
Tolerance is one of the foundations of a modern society governed by law. Freedom of speech, publication, assembly, and expression rests on the principle that different ideas must be permitted. Yet frauds, rulers, cults, fascists, and dictators seek to restrict freedom. They tell people not to speak carelessly, not to ask questions, and not to read certain books. Even in the internet age, a state may decide that citizens must not visit certain sites and block access at the source. Some restrictions are tied to South Korea’s National Security Act. I believe that law should be abolished. We must ask who authorized the state to restrict our freedom in that way.
We can also become petty rulers in close relationships. If we cannot accept that our children, parents, spouses, and friends differ from us, we demand, “Why can’t you do even that?” “Why don’t you obey me?” and “Why do you think that way?” We become angry, limit another person’s freedom, and insist that we are right. Whenever we encounter a person, a television program, or a book, we should therefore ask: Does this statement come from someone who understands difference? Do I actually acknowledge difference?
The Index of Forbidden Books Is a History of Forbidden Difference
Historical Christian societies did not allow questions or unfamiliar books. The Roman Catholic Index Librorum Prohibitorum listed books judged heretical or morally objectionable and prohibited believers from printing or reading them. In mid-sixteenth-century Europe, almost the whole social order belonged to Christendom. A prohibition issued by the church therefore carried power much like a prohibition issued by a state. Thousands of books and authors were blacklisted.
The Index included works connected with Johannes Kepler, who identified the laws of planetary motion, and Copernicus’s work on celestial revolutions. Montaigne’s Essays was included as well. Montaigne’s free, questioning form of writing became deeply important to modern thought. Giordano Bruno argued that the universe was infinite, that the stars were suns, and that planets might orbit them. His view collided directly with the closed, Earth-centered cosmos in which heaven and God were imagined beyond the celestial sphere. He was burned at the stake for multiple reasons that included doctrine, and his books were also prohibited.
When I look at the Index in reverse, it resembles a list of books that made modernity. It contains a remarkable share of the works that drove revolutionary changes in science, philosophy, and thought. Why did authority prohibit them? Their ideas differed from the established worldview. Because religious power could not acknowledge a difference that challenged its doctrine, it ordered people not to ask, not to take interest, and simply to believe.
The Command to Believe and a Buddhism That Questions
The command “Do not question; believe” moves in the opposite direction from wisdom. Buddhism, as I understand it, tells us not to accept anyone’s words unconditionally. That is why I do not tell you that my words are absolute truth and demand belief. You must question, think, observe, investigate whether a claim is right, and criticize it. Criticism and questioning belong to Buddhism. A demand for belief alone approaches superstition.
Buddhism should be grounded in material observation, skepticism, and dependent thinking. It examines conditions and relationships instead of isolating an outcome, and it observes reality instead of submitting to authority. In that sense, it cannot help being scientific. In contrast to the attitude that prohibited many of the books that moved modern science and philosophy, Buddhism must keep questions open before different ideas.
Compassion and Love Begin with Tolerance of Difference
Where do Buddhist compassion and Christian love begin? I believe they begin with tolerance of difference. If we love only people of our own kind—friends from the same region who share our opinions—it is difficult to call that compassion or universal love. Anyone can love a friend. The decisive question is how we treat someone different from us, even someone we regard as an enemy.
Tolerance requires philosophical depth. I must understand that I view the world from inside my own cave and on my own planet, while the other person views it from another. We should not assume that sharing humanity, a period, and a physical place means sharing thoughts and senses. If that delusion remains intact, we ostracize, insult, and discriminate against others, declaring them wrong and evil.
The Little Prince and the rose parted because they could not understand each other. The same problem recurs in romance, marriage, family, social life, and every encounter with another nation, race, or religion. A relationship becomes extremely difficult when I try to be tolerant but the other person permits no difference and demands total obedience. A tolerant society therefore cannot be built by one individual’s goodwill. It becomes possible only when many people share a philosophy of difference and together establish institutions that protect freedom and tolerance.
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