If you look into the core of a religion, they often agree on basic things, but their perspective on them differs, just as a diamond can be seen from many angles, all of them gleaming perhaps, but each sided distinctly unique. One thing they tend to agree on though, is that the most basic 'sin' or mistake is to go away from the path of truth. In Judaism and Christianity, Satan is the great sinner, in that he defies God's will and plans for him as an angel. Not satisfied to serve, he seeks to be an equal to God, (an impossibility, but his ambition knows no bounds, the capital 'He' here being reserved for God and the lowercase one for the fallen angel!). He presents himself as such to others and gets followers thereby to mistakenly worship him. As Milton put it, like any Earthly tyrant, he feels that-
"To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."--
Paradise Lost, Book 1, line 262. Satan speaking of his new domain.
In the Urantia Book, in which his rebellion is seen at heart to be a philosophical one that was carried out through great debates in heaven rather than a physical conflict, he is even depicted as going so far as to deny the very reality of the Universal system of spiritual evolution, whereby beings evolve to higher levels by serving others, as he himself had had to do for millenia. Rather, he teaches his followers that they can have absolutely anything they want, simply by taking it for themselves as they will, without the need to earn it. He goes on to rebel against God by telling lies about His nature, trying to convince both angels and mortals in his domain that the commandments of God are oppressive, when in reality they are loving and protective, guarding our freedom rather than limiting it.
The prime example of this in the Hebrew Bible is when he disguises himself as a serpent and encourages Eve to eat of the 'Fruit of the Tree of Life, that God said not to eat of', encouraging disobedience, rebellion, mistrust and an action that actually leads to misery and suffering rather than the promised God-like powers. The violence and misery that is caused by following the misguiding temptations of Satan are a result of his lies and deceit. So here we have the western traditional definition of evil.
In the East untruth, or more to the point, lowers levels of truth, are also seen as the great 'evil', though it is less often couched in such moralistic terms. Maya, the illusion surrounding creation, forms a dream-like environment in which we are used to living, and through the process of rebirth being the universe in which our trapped souls continuously transmigrate even beyond this present life. The problem here is the limitations of the material sphere in which we believe ourselves to be trapped, limitations which are contrary to our eternal, divine, essentially God-like and spiritual nature. It is a problem of perception which leads us to be trapped like this. If we meditate and seek to see clearly, enlightenment will overtake our usual consciousness with the great oceans of super-consciousness and we will be free- achieving Moksha or 'liberation', entering the Nirvana of the enlightened.
So, whilst in the Western tradition the problem is a mythical, existential corruption caused by a being with shall we say an immensely bad character, plunging worlds such as our own into a highly dualistic struggle between the forces of 'light and darkness', in the East the problem is an inner one, a psychological one. Of course, the mystical systems of the West also have this concern for an inner rather than an outer struggle, to understand our own minds. But it is safe to say that they were periphery to the great strand of Western thinking, that has led to Western science, technology and expansionism by focusing on the world around us to such a great degree. A struggle for truth and progress in the outer world to compliment (not actually to conflict with) the struggle for truth in the Eastern tradition. Humanity working together on the two poles, the two sides of our collective brain.
Whilst complimentary, this does lead to differing approaches to how to deal with the evil things in the world around us. In the Western tradition, they should be 'taken on'- the corruption had it's origin in some form of 'evil' and should be fought, with a view to ending it's deceptive influence and hopefully entirely eliminated. In the Eastern, perhaps more 'feminine' approach, it is part and parcel of the world around us, the deceptive veil of the 'real' that covers the 'Real'. Waking, ordinary consciousness is in itself transitory, illusionary and must be seen through- such bad things as appear in it will never be entirely eliminated but can be overcome by a great and spiritual inner effort, with help from God, gods, and Buddhas. To be involved in an external struggle is to squirm around in the quicksand- it may at times be necessary, but the greater battle is one to regain our full spectrum of super-consciousness and achieve enlightenment. To return from the guise of our fleeting, struggling self, to our great and eternal, unconditioned Self, beyond conventional attributes, living eternal life in the Eternity.
Yet even in the Eastern tradition there is a mythological being who is responsible for spinning this web of Maya, for keeping us in the bondage of the ever-revolving wheel of transmigrating life- Mara, who the Buddha himself overcame in that great moment beneath the Bodhi tree by seeing through the deception that the ephemeral is the real, when in fact there is a greater reality behind it.
So in each tradition, Mara and Satan are not essentially at fault due to crimes, violence, or other active wrong doing. They have a wrong perception of what is real and follow this mistake into titanic degrees of misunderstanding as to what life is really about. They 'believe their own lies', or at least seem to. The way to be sure to life free from their grasp is to follow the Truth, be it God's will for us or our currently hidden true nature. The truth is the light, which shines eternally, even on the darkness of ignorance. As Jesus said of his persecutors 'forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do'- evil comes from ignorance, sin from wilful continuance of an ignorant and wrong course of action. The remedy, now as ever, is a repentant return to the truth of the light, the loving truth of God's law, or seen from the Eastern perspective, Enlightenment. Western people may feel it best to confront an evil and thereby destroy it, 'cleansing the world' of it, just as St George slew the mythical dragon, yet they should take care lest they be duped into seeking to destroy that which is actually innocent and blameless. Easterners by contrast are apt to take a more passive view of external evils and merely view them as something to intelligently avoid- an approach which to some extent may gain them peace of mind and an outwardly harmonious existence. Yet, for their part, they should know when time and neccessity has come to stand up to oppression and corruption, lest it grows too great to control. It may be significant that the democracies and human-rights respecting regimes in Asia were put into place with a lot of help from the Western powers. External reality may well be the clothes of a greater dimension, but it is nevertheless very much a real thing, which we have the power to change for the better, and at times a duty to do so, if we are to remain happy and free.
Perhaps the dilemma of how to deal with external evils was put no better than by Shakespeare's Hamlet-
"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? ."
Hamlet, 3. 1
Yet he also, more cosmically, says-
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy".
Hamlet, 1. 5
No comments:
Post a Comment