I sometimes wonder if an age of evil can even define evil, succinctly, without the usual word games. I admit that people have a sense of evil, maybe from seeing Hollywood movies or reading novels or comic books. Still this doesn’t get us to what evil really means.
As a start, wanting to know the root of evil I went to Skeat’s A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. According to this dictionary it says the term evil is “Prob. allied to over (G. uber), as meaning ‘excessive.’
Yep, that was just what I was looking for—boom!
Evil then is about going beyond limits. In the example of eating, it is gluttony or it is alcoholism which is an addiction to liquor. It could also be substance abuse. Add to this all manner of sexual excesses. We could even throw in plastic surgery—people who are obsessed with how they look! There are thousands of examples of people who are excessive, hence, evil although each and everyone would deny that they are consumed by evil.
When we study Buddhism, we notice that we can no longer allow our self to be evil, especially, if we are in retreat for a few days or months. We eat just basic food—and not too much—two times a day or just once. All our habits of excess are put on hold. No music, no iPhones with their games. We even limit who we can see and communicate with.
No lazy habits are permitted such as staying in bed for a long time or staying up late. In my example, get up before sunrise and study the discourses of the Buddha and meditate. I would often hike a few miles each day or cut firewood. Then it was meditation at night in the mine which had an adit of a little over forty feet. I put up a little shrine at the end of the adit with candles and an incense burner. Again, excess was put on hold.
Buddhist training has to wean us off of evil, in an attempt to bring clarity to an otherwise chaotic pattern of thinking together with crazy emotions and a lack of thoughtful attention on our part towards our everyday world from cooking our breakfast to sawing off a branch of dry wood for our wood stove to keep us warm during the cold.
The more we put our house in order, so to speak, trying to stop our excesses the more we come to recognize calm and peace. Our concentration grows and as a result we better understand the teachings of the Buddha who never intended his world to be understood by evil people.
Surprisingly, most people cannot do this. It is mainly because they are under the dominion of evil even taking pride in their decadence like many of the stars in Hollywood. They are unwilling to let go of their downfall into degeneracy and perversion. These people are not worth our time. Yet people who are evil are attracted to evil which is why Kim Kardashian, for example, can have sixty million followers as in the blind leading the blind to more samsara. And do not doubt that the vast majority of those who are running the world are evil. You just haven’t heard of their excesses. You would be horrified to learn of them.
"As a start, wanting to know the root of evil I went to Skeat’s A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. According to this dictionary it says the term evil is “Prob. allied to over (G. uber), as meaning ‘excessive.’"
You always highlight the neatest resources which I just have to add to my collection--
Very Big Thanks!
Posted by: MStrinado | May 17, 2018 at 11:14 AM