What is evil? What is goodness? What is life?

This is actually very simple... but a complete hash is made of it in modern culture and religion.

Firstly there is no such things as evil, in the same way there is no such thing as darkness. All there is in the latter case is a lack of light, and all there is in the former case is a lack of wisdom.

As argued in a recent post, the wise one treats his enemies with care whilst only the idiot antagonises them with threats of violence. If you threaten a good person with violence you are unlikely to get a favourable response, how much more likely then are you to make things worse if you threat a bad person like this! It's common sense but a mistake we all make.

So the 3 evils are identified in the East as anger, greed and ego. When I first heard this i thought i didn't really have any of these. Then I realised how angry I got; now I realise that I am often unhappy not with what I actually have, but rather with what I could have - this is greed - and of course we are all obsessed with ourselves. Everyone thinks that they are the most important person in the world. Even with family and friends its only because they are "our" family and friends that makes them important. Problem is we tend to justify our poisons and evils. We think they are normal and usual and we don't become aware of how damaging they are. Evil of course is the last thing we will see, this is the nature of evil: seductive, alluring, persuasive, blinding us to the light. This is why people do evil things, simply because they don't see them as evil. If they/we really knew they were evil we wouldn't do them. You think a murderer must be mad to do what they do, but then our soldiers are out there murdering and we think it is ok! Ask the murder I'm sure they think they are right to.

In Judeism we have 10 commandments. I'll just try and fit these into the schema of 3 evils above. That was the real point of this blog... just looking at wikipedia I see that actually there are 12 sentences that have been grouped into 10.

I am the Lord your God
You shall have no other gods before me
You shall not make for yourself an idol
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God
Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy
Honor your father and mother
These 6 are ego. The point being that one should not put oneself above the creator who made even us, and to whome we owe everything including the power of our hands, and the world in which we live. We owe almost everything to our parents also and we are told to remember this lest we make that worst sin of thinking that we belong to ourselves.
You shall not murder
This is the poison of anger and hatred.
You shall not commit adultery
You shall not steal
These 2 are greed, basically not appreciating what we have and taking what is not our.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor
If one lies it might be with the intention of harming someone, in which case it is anger and hatred. If however we lie to get something that we desire then it is greed.
You shall not covet your neighbor's house
You shall not covet your neighbor's wife
These two are greed again.

Another point of confusion that is made very clear is Eastern writing, but less so in Western writings is the source of evil. My grandfather used to say that "it is not what you do but the reason why you do it". This is almost correct. More importantly it is your "motive" in doing it. What exactly drove you to do it. We call all decide to do things and then make up a good reason for it. The point is what initiated this process in our minds. It is this inception point, which requires great honest from us, which is what brings either the praise or the wrath of God (or the causation of karma).

IF someone says something to me and I am caused anger by what they say, I might bite my tongue and think hard why they are wrong in saying this. Then I might be unco-operative with them afterwards, or use an opportunity to argue that they are wrong, or try and prove that I am right. In all these cases no matter how right I am and unjustified they are, the problem is that I am being motivated by anger. This is always wrong, and can only make my own life miserable, make the current situation un pleasant and set up wrath from God in the future. Moments of anger will lead to an ugly future of hostility, difficulty, ugliness and eventually even mental illness.

Likewise if I dump my girlfriend because I have seen a beautiful girl in the night club actually this is greed, maybe also elements of anger. Following this logic we will be always be walking a treadmill because there will always be attractive things waiting to be got forever. This is the sadness of greed.

If we consider ourselves more important than others - which is manifest in both greed and anger where we think that we are the only ones who deserve things or have been hurt - then we will find ourselves becoming more and more isolated. Friendships and relationships will be shallow and uncaring, and the world around will become unharmonious and distant.

These are the punishments that arise from poisons, either by God or Karma depending upon which words you are accustomed to (the logos is the same either way). The wise and good understand this and seek to tame these poisons. The foolish and evil give into these poisons and mount of endless sufferings in the future.

The only difference between a saint and sinner is that the saint never gives up trying. We are all in this, we all have our poisons, and we are all weak in the face of them. Given this it seems right to help one another out in mastering poisons, but it is very hard to inform someone of their own poisons because they really will think they don't have them as indeed I have done. I know inside I have these very severely, and I am becoming more aware of them as I tackle them. This is a good sign and means very gradually (20 years) I'm winning the struggle.

Anyone who doubts this logic should simply watch the way of things. Find the evil darkness inside themselves (the anger, greed or ego) and let it flourish and see if it creates suffering or peace and happiness. On the other hand they can look for some light; some sentiments of care, joy, love or equality between people for these are the 4 lights. Stand under these and ask is this where you truely wish to be? Hard to do when we are poisoned and hurting inside, but if we are caring to ourselves is this not where we want to be? If so then we should work to spread the light inside and outside. A lifetimes work, but the only path to a good future.