Magic’s power lies in dominating the five senses so as to control the person. It can influence the sixth sense, too, which in Buddhism is manas which I translate as mentation. But there is a limit to the power of magic.
Magic itself has no effect on what transcends the six senses. While our life can be a life of delusion dominated and controlled through magic, when we study Buddhism we understand that there is something beyond the senses, something even beyond mankind.
In this brief treatment of magic, it is easy to see that it has a tremendous influence over people. A person can hardly ignore its power. Even the magician falls prey to magic.
Magic is an integral part of our modern world. It makes things charming and alluring, even bewitching, attractive and desirable. Love affairs are born of magic but so are evil leaders who doom their people to misery.
In modern culture another name for magic is advertising, education, propaganda, ideology, mass culture, drugs, the placebo and nocebo effect, sexual attractiveness, etc. Madness is born from magic. Sooner or later everyone is caught by magic. Few escape its power.
Religion is the nemesis of magic or should be in so far as it enshrines the comprehension that transcends creation. In Buddhism the goal is the full realization of the transcendent which is beyond the senses.
“There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned. If, monks there were not that unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, you could not know an escape here from the born, become, made, and conditioned. But because there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, therefore you do know an escape from the born, become, made, and conditioned” (Tatiyanibbānapaṭisaṃyutta-sutta).
Only in the created world is magic possible. But from magic we also have to understand that there is a magic associated with evil which endeavors to keep people attached to the senses especially the sixth sense. We should not forget that Siddhartha battled with the evil demon Mara and that the five aggregates which comprise the psychophysical being belong to Mara!
Interesting echoes of the quote you provide in how the term "Uncreated" is used of God in Eastern Orthodox Christian theology and hymnography.
Posted by: Chris | August 22, 2022 at 05:50 PM
As always, your words tell that you are wise beyond your ears......HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Posted by: Robert Boyer | August 17, 2022 at 08:06 PM