It is the beginning of 2024 and many people have a heavy heart due to an increasingly unstable world situation. Imagine a person, a civilian, caught up in a war. At that moment she is engulfed in flames as shrapnel and debris mutilate her body. Now, imagine the very small, orders of magnitude smaller than the realm of this tragedy. At that scale there is a lot of space. Things are different. Sub-atomic particles are dancing everywhere. Is her consciousness “present” in there? Do subatomic particles know pain and suffering? And what about the war, a type of evil. Is that present? Now imagine the relevance of this event just after the big bang, as the universe begins to expand. Was evil going along for the ride? Again, in a few billion years from now imagine the sun becoming a giant dwarf and imagine the whole world burning up with all life vaporized. Take the same event and look at the whole Cosmos by comparison. Does this person’s suffering become lost in the vastness?
This mystic has mentioned two key words that require elaboration. “Evil” and “suffering.” We all experiencing suffering. It is those times of distress where we experience physical or mental strain and stress, including physical pain and mental “pain.” Suffering is actually a very broad category both in intensity of discomfort and duration. From a practical point of view most people’s life path includes attempting to move away from suffering. Call it seeking comfort, stability, pleasure, love, etc. It’s a biologic thing, as our pets behave the same way. The trouble begins when we try to create a perfect world where there can never be one and the joy begins when we can let go of that concept.
So we want to be happy. What about Evil? Our hypothetical character’s death would inevitably create suffering for surviving family and friends as well. Evil, in this case, is a war that did not have to be fought, initiated by individual and collective actions of people. It’s unnecessary suffering!
One wording or translation of the first pure precept in Soto Zen is “Cease from evil. Release all self attachment.” It is a fundamental Buddhist belief that suffering, in general, is caused by grasping or craving, being attached to things and concepts including the idea of being a permanent separate “self.”
Evil, from this mystics perspective, is causing suffering for oneself and others (the two are inseparable) by selfish acts of volition. Logically, good then would imply being selfless and helping others. We don’t have to create a mental division between self and other. Evil acts happen because we don’t see the other as our selves. One group separates itself from another. One side is right and the other wrong. One country is stronger and the other weaker and it is their destiny and right to eliminate or disenfranchise the weaker. It is the individual and collective grasping or striving for satisfaction and happiness at the expense of another person or group that is the dynamic that creates evil, or unnecessary suffering. It’s been going on for a very long time.
Moving to a scientific perspective, there is natural selection, or putting it bluntly, the survival of the fittest. But is that really the whole story? Here is an article from the New Scientist titled How did complex life evolve? For nearly 2 billion years of earth history organic life consisted of a variety of very simple unicellular organisms called prokaryotes. Then, for reasons unknown, perhaps a freak accident, one cell invaded another one. Here is the quote from the article:
“So what happened? The critical event appears to have occurred about 2 billion years ago, when one simple cell somehow ended up inside another. The identity of the host cell isn’t clear, but we know it engulfed a bacterium, which began to live and divide within it, like a squatter. The two somehow found a way to live together amicably, and eventually formed a symbiotic relationship called endosymbiosis.”
Who was the “fittest?” The Engulfer or the engulfed? Now, humans write words and “engulfed” could be a neutral term but if some alien organism engulfed us, or gobbled us up, we might considered that an evil act. Intent plays in here as well. This mystic likes the way that this hypothesized event turned out, resulting in symbiosis, essentially cooperation. It says something about sentient beings and also dulls the “right and wrong” or Judeo Christian good vs. evil paradigm. And it provides a clue about the ultimate nature of reality.
In this piece from the Lion’s Roar, everything is buddha nature, we are taught that our fundamental nature is non-dual and beyond good and evil. The non-dual has been called God, even by some Buddhist scholars, and that is fine. But this still does not resolve the fundamental matter. While some great souls can be heroes, others start wars. My mind can become tangled reflecting on those suffering currently or remembering that during World War II 60 million people perished. In that war, the decisions made by the leaders of the Axis powers, in their delusion, eventually lead to infliction of great pain on others and their own people as well. Both sides, Axis and Allies, had so much hate for each other and celebrated with great joy, when victorious in a battle. Even if the “good” side won the war, we are far from a world at peace currently. Evil and wars start with ideas of separateness.
A sudden ray of sunshine through the Pacific Northwest mist and the ineffable feeling that beauty induces, suggests a fundamental reality beyond pain and suffering but also implies a paradox and a sort of obligation to delve further into the mystery of existence, both the beautiful and the ugly. So in the end, evil is part of Buddha nature if “everything” is Buddha nature. Suffering is not glossed over and Joy is not forgotten. Keep asking questions! Is a single person’s suffering from an evil act relevant in ultimate scales of time and space? We don’t have much of a handle on what “everything” really is, nor can we control others. But we do have a choice to be less selfish, level headed, authentic and helpful. This matters. Meditation and spiritual practice can move us toward that direction. The second and third pure precepts in Soto Zen say “Do good for others” and “Do only good.” The kind of world we live in is reflected in the individual and collective actions of its inhabitants and the individual and collective actions of its inhabitants to some extent determines the kind of world they live in. So if you ask this mystic, is that person’s suffering relevant in all scales and dimensions, I’d answer with a resounding yes! Also, all that space and time and cosmology leave out Love. What is that? Here is a perspective from
When you look at others think
That it will be through them
That you will come to Buddhahood.
So look on them with frank and loving hearts
Little Known Mystic 