On the Nonduality of Good and Evil
David R. Loy
"If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously Because it emphasizes mindfulness of our thought-processes, Buddhism encourages us to be wary of antithetical concepts: not only good and evil, but success and failure, rich and poor, even the duality between enlightenment and delusion. We distinguish between the opposing terms because we want one rather than the other, yet the meaning of each depends upon the other. That sounds abstract, but such dualities are actually quite troublesome for us. If, for example, it is important to live a pure life (however I understand purity), then I need to be preoccupied with avoiding impurity. If wealth is important for me, then I am also worried about avoiding poverty. We cannot take one lens without the other, and such pairs of spectacles filter our experience of the world.
committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate
them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line
dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human
being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
What does this mean for the duality of good versus evil? One way the interdependence of good and evil shows itself: we don't feel we are good unless we are fighting against evil. We can feel comfortable and secure in our own goodness only by attacking and destroying the evil outside us. If you want to be a hero, well, occasionally a natural disaster will do, but the best thing is a villain to battle. St. George needs that dragon in order to be St. George. His heroic identity requires it. And, sad to say but true, that is why we like wars: war cuts through the petty problems of daily life, and unites us good guys here against the bad guys over there. There is fear in that, of course, but it is also exhilarating. The meaning of life becomes clearer.
We all love this struggle between good (us) and evil (the other guy). Think of the plot of most films: all the James Bond films, all the Star Wars films, all the Indiana Jones films In such movies, it's obvious who the bad guys are: they are nasty, they don't mind hurting and killing other people to get whatever they want. So they must be stopped, by any means necessary, which means that it is okay - to tell the truth, pleasurable - to see the violence inflicted against them. Because the villains like to hurt people, it's okay to hurt them. Because they like to kill people, it's okay to kill them. After all, they are evil. And evil must be destroyed.
What is this kind of story really teaching us? That if you want to hurt someone, it is important to demonize them first - in other words, fit them into your good-vs.-evil script. That is why the first casualty of all wars is truth.
Such stories are not just entertainment. In order to live, we need air, water, food, clothes, shelter, friends - and we need stories, because they teach us what is important in life. They give us models of how to live in an otherwise confusing world. Until the last hundred years or so, the most important stories for most people were religious stories: for Christians, the life of Jesus Christ and the stories of saints inspired by Christ's life; for Buddhists, the story of Shakyamuni Buddha and those who followed his example.
Today, however, the existential function of such stories has become subordinated to the laws of the market, which is flooded with all kinds of stories. The issue is not whether a story is an ennobling one, a good myth to live by, but the bottom line: will it sell?
The story of good and evil is attractive because simple and easy to understand, yet from a Buddhist viewpoint it can be dangerously deceptive. It keeps us from looking deeper, from trying to discover causes. Once something has been identified as evil, there is no more need to explain it. It's time to fight it.
In contrast, Buddhism focuses on the three unwholesome roots of evil, also known as the three poisons: greed, ill will and delusion. In place of the struggle between good and evil, Buddhism emphasizes ignorance and enlightenment because the basic issue depends on our self-knowledge: do we really understand what motivates us?
There is a nice way to make this point using animated films. In Disney's Lion King there is the noble king, his loving wife and their innocent cub Simba, on the one hand, and the evil uncle on the other side. The evil uncle hatches a plot to kill the king and eliminate Simba, who escapes but eventually returns to . . .you get the idea. All very predictable and boring, although visually beautiful.
In contrast, one of the many interesting things about Hayao Miyazaki's animated films is the way they avoid the simple duality between good and evil. In Princess Mononoke, for example, various people do bad things, not because they are simply evil, but because they are complicated: often selfish and greedy, and therefore stupid in the sense that they are so narrowly focused on what they want that they do not see the wider implications of their actions.
I do not know if Miyazaki considers himself a Buddhist, but his films seem very Buddhist to me. Compare this passage from the Sutta Nipata:
"What is it," said Ajita to the Buddha. "that smothers the world? What makes the world so hard to see? What would you say pollutes the world and threatens it most?" "It is ignorance which smothers," said the Master, "and it is heedlessness and greed which make the world invisible. The hunger of desire pollutes the world, and the great source of fear is the pain of suffering."
Because this gives us a better understanding of what actually motivates people - all of us – it also implies a very different way to address the problems created by ignorance and desire and violence: not a new holy war against evil, but a less dramatic struggle to transform greed into generosity, ill will into love, and ignorance into wisdom.
A Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson about how he felt about the tragedy on September 11th.
He said, "I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is vengeful, angry, violent. The other wolf is loving, forgiving, compassionate."
The grandson asked him, "Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?"
The grandfather answered, "The one I feed."
David R. Loy (loy@shonan.bunkyo.ac.jp)
Faculty of International Studies, Bunkyo University, Japan
http://www.bpf.org/loy-war.html
BACK TO THE CONVERSATION