“The Story of God” – A Buddhist
Perspective on Evil
April 26,
2016 Justin
Whitaker
Patheos
In this week’s
episode of “The Story of God” (airing May 1), Morgan Freeman
explores the concept of evil. As
with previous topics, apocalypse andcreation, their is no
perfect word for evil in the Asian languages of Buddhism. However,
as with those concepts, when we tease them out, exploring their
etymological and historical roots, we see that even in English and
associated languages, these words can mean much more than we
commonly take them to mean.
Getting beyond the
superficial, we find that religions around the world
– peoplearound
the world – faced similar problems and often came up with similar
solutions in terms of myths or ideas about the nature of the person
and the world. This isn’t to overlook the differences. In fact it
was the differences and the unique insights of both Kant and early
Buddhism that drew me to my line of study. But their is a danger,
often couched in Orientalism, of overstating the differences and
potential incommensurability of religious/philosophical
systems.
For instance, can a
Christian talk about original sin in terms of “primal desire that
we all have?”
Tune in Sunday to
see for yourself.
Moving on to India,
Freeman asks his Hindu guide, “In Christianity you’ve got the Devil
and you’ve got God, you’ve got good, you’ve got evil. You don’t
seem to have that going on in Hinduism.” She responds, “In Hinduism
there’s no dichotomy between good and evil. The same person can
become good and evil… There is always, in the end, a hope; the hope
that even the evil can be liberated.”
Freeman’s reaction:
“… evil is just a spirit that needs to find peace.
Cool.”
He then takes us to
one of my favorite religions to
teach: Zoroastrianism. Freeman gives an origin date of
3500 years ago, though the exact origins are murky; some
traditionalists dating the founder, Zarathustra (or Zoroaster in
Greek), to 7500 B.C.E. Others think his life was somewhere between
1400 and 900 B.C.E. and today the most common date given by
historians is around 630 B.C.E.
(see Van Voorst, World
RELG for a
wonderful chapter on the religion).
Central to
Zoroastrian belief is a dualism, two competing forces personified
in a good God, Ahura Mazda, and a devil-like figure, Angra Mainyu.
It could be that these are simply common human ideas, perhaps
existing well before Zoroaster ever lived. Van Voorst notes that
they exist in Hindu sources, and Biblical scholars will point to
early Jewish ideas along the same lines. Or it could be that
Zoroaster coined these ideas and that they were then borrowed by
other religions, East and West. Author Mary Boyce takes this latter
view, suggesting that, “Zoroastrianism has probably had more
influence on human life, directly and indirectly, than any other
single faith.”
On the side of a
Zoroastrian influence on the East, particularly Buddhism, a major
proponent is Jayarava Attwood, a scholar and blogger in England.
You can read a blog post of his (Who Were the
Artharvans?) and a journal
article on the topic: Possible Iranian Origins for the
Śākyas and Aspects of Buddhism.
In Zoroastrianism
as we know it today out of this dualism arises the motto:
“Good thoughts, Good words, Good deeds.” The idea being that in
order to defeat evil, one must guard one’s mind first and foremost,
but then also one’s speech and action. I think most Buddhists will
smile in recognition of that idea.
Freeman then takes
us to New Zealand, where a researcher shows us that children, when
convinced that there is an invisible princess watching them, act
significantly more ethically (in this case not cheating in a
game) than children who believe they are alone. It’s good enough
research, I think. And it shows that children around the age of 5
can benefit from being lied to in the short run. However, I’m not
so sure how it relates to the rest of
us.
Finally we travel
again to Sarnath, India, home of a large Tibetan Buddhist
population and the Vajravidya Monastery. But the “Buddhism” segment
in this episode is over before it even starts, all 2 minutes of it.
Freeman tells us, “Buddhist believe that the urge to do evil stems
from ignorance about how our minds work.”
What more can we
say about the concept of evil in Buddhism? It’s fair to repeat the
old wisdom that “there is no word for evil in Buddhism.” But then
we might explore a bit further. In a wonderful book, the popular
secular Buddhist Stephen Batchelor does just
this: Living with the Devil: A
Meditation on Good and Evil. In it he
writes:
The
devil is a way of talking about that which blocks ones path in
life, frustrates one’s aspirations, makes one feel stuck, hemmed
in, obstructed. While the
Hebrew Satanmeans
“adversary,” the Greek diabolos means
“one who throws something across the path.” In India, Buddha called
the devil Mara,
which in Pali and Sanskrit means “the killer.”
He
continues:
Only
when Buddha was able to experience the desires and fears that
threatened to overwhelm him as nothing but impersonal and ephemeral
conditions of mind and body, did they lose their power to mesmerize
him. Instead of perceiving them as forces of an avenging army
intent on his destruction, he recognized that they were no more
solid than brittle, unfired pots that crumble on being struck by a
well-aimed stone. As soon as Buddha stopped compulsively
identifying the thoughts, feelings, and sensations that arose
within him as “me” or “mine,” Mara could no longer influence
him.
In Pali, the
closest word to evil we
find is pāpa,
which is often used in conjunction withpuñña,
meaning good or meritorious.
As in the Hinduism discussed above, these were/are not absolute
categories. A mostly good person could do
evil/pāpa,
deeds and vice versa. The point is to recognize the two
propensities in oneself and eliminate the evil. Combined with the
doctrine of karma (kamma in
Pali), you also must recognize that your good and evil deeds will
have an effect on your future. Some Buddhists have been known to
keep literal accounting books, measuring up good and bad deeds for
the day or year. Others, mostly those influenced by modernism, see
both in mostly or strictly psychological terms.
And, quite
interestingly, in Buddhism one is taught not only to give up evil
deeds, but also good ones in the sense of those that could or would
go in your accounting diary. The goal, we find out, is
simply spontaneous goodness. In
discussing the notion a perfected being,
or arahant,
in early Buddhism, Bhikkhu Analayo writes:
What arahants have
“gone beyond” is the accumulation of karma. They have
transcended the generation of “good” (puñña) and of
its opposite “evil” (pāpa). But the same cannot be said of
wholesomeness (kusala). In fact, by eradicating all unwholesome
(akusala) states of
mind, arahants become
the highest embodiment of wholesomeness (kusala). So much is this
the case that, as indicated in the Samanamandikā Sutta, they
are spontaneously virtuous and do not even identify with their
virtue.