What is Evil? Halloween.

In light of the previous post how massively we don't understand evil.

Hieronymus Bosch and a vision of Hell with all the vices and tortures and sufferings.

And Evil has very much become associated with vices and doing bad things. It's become very mixed up in neurotic ways of thinking, with private and hidden lusts and all manner of shadowy things.

Yet really it's all just the ignorance of believing in a self protected in a box we carry.

How can this be?

Even Buddhism speaks of Karma and Being Good. We sorry about doing bad things because of the suffering that it will cause in the future. And we do good things to gain the pleasant fruits in the future. Identical to Christianity and other religions where God will punish us for doing bad things.

But actually God will punish us for disobeying Him. For having an Ego that we dare to think is equal to God and for listening to that self rather than God. Isn't this the same?

And in fact karma is only basic training. It teaches us that suffering is caused, and it is caused by unwise actions. It teaches us to look inside and not blame other people. It makes us realise that the world is not the problem, it is just phenomena, the problem lies within us and how we deal with the world.

But how do we deal with suffering?

First off we don't understand suffering. Buddha died from a blood clot that killed part of his gut and caused a rupture a month later and he died in agony. Hardly a painless experience for the world's first (in recorded history) enlightened being. But he didn't suffer! That is the miracle.

He didn't suffer because there was no "outside" self being dragged kicking and screaming into the situation. There was just the experience. It wasn't happening to an observer who had tagged on for the experience, like a ghost in the shell, it was happening as Buddha.

Now cutting short for brevity. But Evil is simply all those things that stem from Ego and reinforce the idea of a separate self that has joined us for the ride. We like to think, as Dennett says, that we are in a cinema witnessing the world. And this leads us towards nice things. And when there are bad things we want to leave the cinema. This is inauthentic being. Life happens on a canvas in front of us. We need to immerse, be brave and be in life as it happens. Not as witnesses, but actually be Life itself. This is why Present Moment is so important. The Ego is barred from entering the Present Moment. We must put our Self down in order to Live*

* Another story available here where to enter paradise we must part with our most trusted companion - our self. 

Arguably when Jesus died on the Cross he put down his Ego. That is what died on the Cross. And he was reborn free from the entrapment of the world.

Does Jesus still live? Does Buddha still live? No they both died. But yes because they are beyond Ego now. This is why many religions ban images of God. That person on the cross is long dead. And so is Buddha. Buddha even says in the Diamond Sutra if you look for me in sights and sounds you have strayed from the path. Jesus and Buddha are Living and within us, not outside.

So as Halloween comes around how far from the point is the Pop version of Evil that we get today. Full of demonic creatures, undead, vampires, ghosts and murderous people. All these creatures have one thing in common they would not give up their false self and ego and live. Instead they prefer to hold on to the mortal solid tangible physical body and self and so perish in suffering. Pictures of evil are sad pictures of profound ignorance and stupidity. We need compassion for these beings and pray that we never become so deluded as to become them. Or better pray that given that we are all currently bound for the grave our self, we have the power to struggle to become the living and not the dead.

My favourite Buddhist passage:

The Destroyer brings under his sway the person of distracted mind who, insatiate in sense desires, only plucks the flowers (of pleasure). [Dhammapada 4:48]