Good Vs. Evil: the Eastern viewpoint.

I am taoist. As such, no, there is no proper symbol of good or evil, we have no God and no opposite of God or Satan or anything. We feel that Good and Evil are simply another set of opposites, as light or dark, up or down. All of these are represented by Yin and Yang. A catch is that the white dot in the black, yang within yin, represents how there is good within evil, and vice versa.
We see life as a sort of spectrum, two ends, one middle. There is no such thing as an absolute, no matter how far you walk in one direction, you can always walk back.
As is implied by this, neither good nor evil are perfect, nor are they equal.
Finally, no, there is no hell, just as there is no heaven. In Taoism we believe that no matter what road in life you lead, it will come to an end, and your spirit will return to it's source. We describe this as water in a bowl. Nothing is eternal, and so with time, the bowl(your body) must wear and break, and the water (your spirit) must spill. The water will flow through the ground and inevitably return to a great river, where it might once again be drawn out into a new bowl and you might live a new life. This is my interpretation, as I believe in reincarnation.
I hope that helps to answer your question(s) from one point of view.

 

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If we are to accept God (per Sanatana Dharma) is it also not accepting Evil (which is the opposite of God) ?

 

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Thanks for the responses guys, they've all been very informative.

As of right now, I've been reading a bit about supernatural phenomena like for example miracles performed by saints (christians) and of course buddhist monks who can go days without sleeping or even levitating yogis. What caught my eye is all the "somewhat recent" boom of discussion about exorcism and what not.

When I was a catholic, I did get to learn a bit about exorcism from friends who knew better and all but now that I'm more into eastern spirituality and eastern thought, essential aspects of my former way of thinking or my perception of a "god" have found a corresponding eastern "interpretation" (for lack of a better word) except this...devil thing. Hopefully I'm not obsessed with the whole idea but I'm just looking for an answer, why is there no such thing for say buddhists or taoists?

Why do you hear about this kind of phenomena (demonic posession, etc.) mainly in the western civilization? I've heard all these stories about devout catholics and other christians having spiritual fights with some evil entity to which someone might say "So you see, the devil's for real", but what about equally spiritual monks in tibet or yogis in India?

It's not that anything bad should happen to spiritual people but all this exorcism and demons stuff sounds to me like it's more of a western thing.

Hopefully this made sense, if not please say so and I'll gladly re-elaborate. I'd like to hear what people in this forum have to say, like genep, spider, kmguru (and spookz if he were still around, man I miss the guy), but the rest of you are also welcome to contribute, so now you're like my "eastern" buddies who know better

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No, the concept of being 'possessed' isn't just a Western thing, it goes very far back.
fpr example as far back as shamanism!

it ismeaing that 'you' ar taken over by some other force 'you' haveno control over

in modern secualr idiom is is various formsof so-called 'mental illness' like 'obsessive compulsive syndrm' 'psychosis' etc

the question you ask isincredibly deep actually,and is really in need of being deeply explored to

the basis of te belief inpossession is the idea tat 'I' am a staic entity that CAN be 'taken over' by another 'force' be it positive or negative. rather tan understanding our beingas a CONTINUUM of potential experiential process...

the positive ideas of possession:
in Classical Dionysianism, the celebrants would partake of a psychedelic sacrament which was ALSo their god, Dionysos. I.e, te mushroom they aded to teir 'wine' was considered their god. Thus theingesting of 'hir' made them beliee tey were becoming 'possessed' by te 'god of Nature'. Dionysos. and tis allowed them to really abandon temselves to ecstasy in totaly uninhibited ways....!

in its negative context we can use Christian examples. for its the Cristians who really are the creators of the 'Devil', so in this belief system , being possewssed by him and his demons is forever and ever. serious shit
so we have tales of the 'saints' struggling wit demons don't we?
what's this mean?

it means that when you invest all your energies into an ideal of 'purity' then all your other deeper stuff becomes dammed up and stagnates and turns into your 'demons'. I.e, you ae playing a game with yourself called :

'good' versus 'bad'

also see here,
'Review of Chinese Magical Medicine by Michael Strickmann www.daoiststudies.org/review.strickmann.php
keep in mind that the 'daoism' being referred to isnot philosophical Taoism--which fro example seeker-of-the-way eloquently describes, but more religious daoism, wit its ideas of 'immortality pills' and whatnot

 

Its not just in ignoring it, its when you refuse to take responsibility for every part of you as well as the shadow/dark and the motivations and actions that result. As an example, if I murdered someone and refused to take responsibility for my deed, the motive for the agression and disown it and declare I am innocent. The 'demons' are created when you act only for your own benefit or partition your psyche. This does not absolve the person of responsibility as even the personal 'demons' are shaped to serve a function, it is just being hypocritical. I do evil yet I'm still pure because I want to have my cake and eat it too bs rather than taking responsiblity or controlling what you should. A lack of real conscience.

 

I was discussing a similar idea with a friend the other day, except I was using the Yin-Yang as an example where if either force was dominant then the other force would tend to rise up again in order to maintain the balance.

I'm not too sure if I was making a point with the Yin-Yang thing but in the context of what you're saying, is it then possible that no matter how good you strive to be, other parts of you might resurface as a response to the psychological/emotional imbalance produced by the emphasis placed on given behavioral patterns?

I once read something about a conversation between a chinese philosopher (can't recall who it was) and an interviewer who was asking the philosopher what he thought of good and evil.

The chinese mater stated: "The fight between good and evil is comparable with two dogs always fighting each other." The interviewer asks: "And which one wins?".

-- "Whichever dog I feed and take care of the most".

A guy I was talking with online offered his own interpretation to the above story. For the englihtened Buddha, there was no such thing as a fight between good and evil...he simply starved his two dogs to death.

His interpretation does make sense if you think of it in terms of "in-action", the "non-doing" state where the "doing", the "acting intentionally" is karma (but I would not know how to fit karma into the whole picture, as I do not yet "grasp it" or "see it" or "realize it", however it might be said...hopefully I'm not running off in a different tangent here).

What the story means to me though is: Is it necessary to keep the "fight" going if we want to remain balanced?

 

That reminds me of this:

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And forgive me for making too many assumptions, but so...is mental discipline more of an eastern thing? Well, you have things like NLP, Psychology and the such in Western culture which are helpful elements to anyone seeking aid.

However, practices like meditation, yoga (including yama and niyama - not just asana and pranayama), the so called "zen way of life" that you read about in books...is this what provides eastern spirituality (if you wanna call it that way) with the element of self-control or, as Mr. Karate in the picture says, tempering your mind?

And what would this...primary OS be? How would you recognize it and go back to it once you run off into one of the different partitions of the mind?

DISCLAIMER: I'm aware it's a ficticious videogame character in a ficticious setting, but I'm using that example also in reference to what duendy mentioned about fragments of someone's personality stagnating and turning malignant as a result of being neglected.

In case you were wondering, the guy on the right side of the picture is posessed according to the game's storyline. Contact me if you want to know more about the game.

 

But then who knows, taking responsibility for yourself is the basis of genuine spiritual growth. As such, many a devout christian would be compelled to practice full ownership of their actions and forsee the consequences.

Not necessarily hypocritical, at worst it would seem like they would not be aware of it at a conscious level. Some saints were sinners but some others who weren't even saints they were just hardcore christians whose only motivation was to practice "good" as specified in christian morality. In both cases (saints and very religious people) there have been cases of this so called demonic posession which would seem to have taken place for no logical reason apparently.

I know it sounds vague just saying that there have been cases of christians and roman catholics who've experienced posession. It seems to me that to cite specific cases I would have to ask for this topic to be moved to the Christianity section, but I made it clear that I want to hear on the phenomenon from an eastern philosophy viewpoint.

Again, it sounds to me like legitimate christian morality would be something like: "God, give me the strength to do good and keep me from doing evil". As a former catholic that's what I knew the basic moral was...yes, you are quite capable of doing evil but the trick is to do good which will help you grow spiritually in time. Notice I'm not defending Christianity nor am I against it. As to why I "went eastern", that's a discussion for a different topic.

 

HI, i'm not into Eastern beliefs in 'Buddhism, 'karma' etc. i think these are errr good exampe of what i am mentioing. forexample te very concept and pactice of karma has created one of the most poverty stricken and callous systems, the caste system. where people wit money wil look with indifferece of people begging on streets, having deformed themselvs to get at least some pity to live.
furthe i seethew whole PURSUIT of 'goodness/purity' to be a dumb-run. i call it not bein EARTHED. lost in positive vs negatve......i sense it is better to be R E A L wit yourself. to explore what yo are really feeling, tinking. start there. not become an authoritarian on your own prson, tryig to batter down any 'impure' thoughts and feelings you may have. as actions show, in history, THAT attitude projects out ontp te community, and next thing you re chasin people you believe are 'impure' wit a gun, and doing extremely evil things. and a 'perfect' example is the turtures and murderrs doen by the Catholic Churches Inquisition against innocent children women and men! all in the name of the 'all-good God' and/or 'Jesus Christ'!

 

You mean something like: "These people are poor and miserable because they must have done some bad things before, and this is their punishment", that kind of thing? If so, I believe it runs on any society with any set of beliefs on either side of the world: a self-conviction that everyone gets what they deserve which is not necessarily true because we humans are entitled to at least some level of dignity, whether the government or the higher classes acknowledge that or not.

Maybe I'm wrong but, isn't the caste system based on the Hinduist belief of reincarnation, where you come back as a superior or inferior form depending on how you acted in your past life? I think the Buddhist version of reincarnation is termed 'Rebirth': as long as the karma cycle is not broken, the individual will always be reborn.

And speaking of karma, again, I don't know too much about it but I know it's definitely not the eye for an eye thing we have come to know.

This pretty much boils down to tolerance. We can disagree on a particular set of values ad still be civil about it. The rest is politics.

That sounds like something Krishnamurti would say (Jiddu and U.G.). There is no god, there's no devil. It's just you as you are and there is nothing else. Don't look for it because you will not find it. I'm such a sucker for U.G., I like some of his thoughts, though he's somewhat of a materialist but anway...I do see your point: the idea of good and evil is what creates an internal division which is likely to "blind" people and keep them from looking at the big picture.

Damn...and not a word in this reply dealt with spiritual posession or, in the context of clinical psychology, psychosis. I guess we're off into another sub-topic in this discussion.

 

the mental health movement is a modification of the religious social control oppression. even more insidious actually--if thats fukin possible. NOW they make out we are mere biochemial machines, and any mainfestations of our depth is deemed by these poeple, 'mental biological disease/dis-order!!

 

ermmm...in some cases yeah, my former counselor was a hack but I've had the chance to meet a couple good psychologists and also to read the works of yet others who've brought up interesting ideas about the freedom of the human spirit

and in a sense, scripts are everywhere (which is what you're talking about this opression of others and the such), but the truly conscious individual would overcome these scripts...it's a matter of awareness.

now for the term psychosis, and I didn't make this clear before, is just a label for what some churchies and I witnessed at some point during spiritual retreats...and not to talk about the topic in a morbid way but we did witness some of this so called posession but nothing like what they show in the movies...anywho, this topic's starting to look dead

oh well, raja yoga anyone?

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...look DEAD??????? for whom?

 

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
--Richard Bach

 

Thanks for the quote. Funny, I just experienced the same thing first hand last weekend, though the details do not pertain to this conversation. Sadly, it's the time and distance which gives you the bird's eye view.

On a different note, I was doing some research on the mask worn by the guy in the picture I had posted in a prior message. Perhaps some of you already know about Tengu, but here's a couple of pretty informative sites for the rest of us

http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/tengu.shtml
http://www.youkaimura.org/tengu.htm

The relevance of Tengu to this thread comes from the description the site gives of these creatures as apparently evil spirits but the interesting part is that they are actually divine punishers of vain Buddhist priests and those who use their "spiritual knowledge" to gain power or position.

Needless to say, I want a mask like Mr. Karate's

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'Good' necessarilly defines 'evil'; 'evil' defines 'good'.
Two sides of One coin.
Due to perceptival weaknesses, they appear to have seperate 'existences'.
They do not, they are One.

 

ermmm I was trying to get more out of the topic before it ended up in advaita, or non-duality which is one of the main eastern views of this so called "good" and "evil" - if not the main one. Thanks for sharing though.

It's a daunting task to compare points of view among different religious traditions on such a general topic but it's worth it as long as I get to hear what you guys think, though I might have to do some more digging myself if I want to get more information.

 

So, you wanted the Eastern perspective, but not the 'main' one? ermmm, ok.. I recant! *__-