Understanding and Overcoming Evil, Part 1: A Radical Alternative Approach

 

There are many things that are happening today that are very upsetting, both in this country and in the world. We see dictators and tyrants seizing power and causing great harm, human trafficking, people accumulating vast amounts of wealth through dishonesty while other people can’t get medical care or are starving. It seems endless, and we are understandably upset by this.  We are appalled and stunned by the vast amount of evil in the world.  The historical Buddha had something to say about evil and it is quite revolutionary.

In our culture, we routinely describe murderers, political tyrants, and bigots as evil.  But in the Buddha’s teachings, evil does not exist.  This doesn’t mean people don’t do things that cause great harm, pain, and suffering.  But it does mean that all harmful acts are seen as the result of ignorance.  Ignorance most certainly does exist, and it accounts for all the minor ills and major atrocities we see in the world.

Let’s start with some questions.  What happens when a toddler pulls a toy away from a sibling and causes an injury?  Do we blame the child or see them as evil?  If a blind person bumps into me in a supermarket parking lot and knocks all my groceries to the ground, what then?  Do we blame the blind person?  No. We recognize that in both examples, what has been done is clearly the result of ignorance.  In Buddhist teachings, all harmful acts, no matter how horrible, are seen as a form of blindness or ignorance.  We may see someone who votes to elect a horrible person to high office as evil, but they are really just voting for someone that they mistakenly believe is the best person for the job.

Ruthless dictators are often seen as classic examples of evil people.  But such a person is really just at the extreme end of the same ignorance continuum as the toddler and the blind person—or the puppy who chews up your new shoes.  The dictator is always grasping for more wealth, more power, more adulation from his supporters, more attention from the media—and doesn’t care who he hurts in the process.  He thinks that the things he strives for will make him safe from life’s insecurities and make him happy and fulfilled.  We don’t usually see it this way, but the dictator wants what we all want: happiness, freedom from suffering, safety, purpose in life, meaning, and love and respect—but he is vastly ignorant as to how to go about obtaining these things.  Let’s take a look. 

The dictator or the organized crime boss mistakenly believes that they are separate from others and that the suffering of other people does not affect them.  But their actions that harm others to get what they want do affect themselves.  They make themselves more insensitive, and hardened, and cut off from real connection with people.  They also create a habit of seeing everyone or everything as an object for extracting some benefit for themselves, and their behavior sets an example that makes it easier for others to do the same.  Their criminal behavior helps to create an extractive and objectifying community that we all have to live in, including the criminal—a community of “What’s in it for me?”

The dictator’s predatory behavior drives people away from him, and poisons his relationships with others.  That behavior also attracts other predators to the criminal’s circle of associates—associates who will not be there to care about and comfort him in times of hardship.  And decent people will be repelled by an exploiter’s behavior and will choose not to be part of his life.  Lying, cheating, intimidating people, and breaking promises impact the kind of community that we all have to live in--including the person who cheats and lies.

We all have a profound need to share ourselves with other people:  a need for intimacy, for shared love, for comfort and support, and to bond with and to give to others.  Ignorance of this leads to a contracted state of consciousness, to defensiveness (“Keep your guard up at all times”), lack of trust, suspicion, chronic fear—all of which are forms of suffering.  The harming person has to deal with the lack of peace of mind, worry, and stress regarding covering his trail and not getting caught.  This is a life that philosopher Thomas Hobbes once described as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” full of struggle, conflict, fear, and anxiety.  Having extreme power and wealth will not provide protection from this suffering.  Seeing ourselves as separate is central to the suffering created—the “evil” person sees himself as separate from other individual people, separate from the wider community of humans, and separate from nature and from the planet.  He is ignorant about our connections to these things and how this ignorance makes him suffer.

Those who create harm also live in a state of separation and ignorance from their own bodies, emotions, and mental operations.  A political dictator or an extremely wealthy person who strives after more billions of dollars at the expense of others holds on to their dysfunctional and harmful behavior because they don’t yet see the connection between their behavior and their suffering.  Even more basic, is the fact that they are often not consciously in touch with the fact that they are suffering--not in touch with their fear, resentment, envy, anxiety, hatred, and woundedness.

"For those of us who pay close attention to the public life of the [current U.S.] president, it appears to be a life with little joy. We witness mostly anger and retribution. We see few happy moments, real or contrived, as we have with every other president over the decades. You see no family, no grandchildren or pets running around the Oval Office, just floor-to-ceiling gilt. He is playing a never-ending game fueled by rancor. What a sad life he lives. What a sad time for our country."  ---Dan Rather, Substack, September 30, 2025. 

When we begin to see harmful behavior as ignorance rather than evil, it can help us to not hate those who exploit others. Hating people who cause harm does not make the exploiter any less harmful.  In addition, carrying hatred inside ourselves causes us to suffer and depletes our vitality.   Carrying hatred within us is damaging to our physical and emotional health, and to our outlook on life.  Seeing harmful behavior for what it is—ignorance—softens us into caring and love, and redirects the energy of hate toward actually doing something constructive to alleviate ignorance and the suffering caused by it.

When we get to the point where we can see harmful behavior as due to ignorance, we can drop the hatred and the desire to hurt those who cause harm.  Our focus can shift from punishment and revenge to education.  We can, as Jesus said, “Forgive them for they know not what they do.”  And to paraphrase something the Dalai Lama once said, “It’s bad enough that some people cause great harm to us-- shall we give them our peace of mind, too?”

It must be added here that, though we have compassion for people who cause severe harm, we also recognize the need to restrain them to prevent further harm.  People causing harm need to be stopped.  And we also need to correct their ignorance—their belief, for example, that the world is a place where “One is either the hammer or the anvil” as Hitler once said:  you either deliver blows to people to extract what you want, or you yourself receive blows and are robbed.  This sounds very harsh, but quite possibly we would believe this ourselves if our circumstances of birth had been brutally different.     

It is important for ourselves and for the world at large, that we begin to cultivate the habit of seeing harmful acts as the result of ignorance.  How do we do this?  Here are two practices that will help.

The first thing we can do is to practice seeing or reframing harmful acts as due to ignorance rather than evil. This can be done as a formal sitting meditation practice or as something I do throughout my daily activities.  Each time I read about, bring to mind, see, or become upset about some harmful behavior, I can choose to look for how this act is arising as a result of ignorance.  For example, suppose I read about Senator Doe supporting a law that will make it harder for racial minorities to vote, and I can ask myself “What is the ignorance that is creating Doe’s behavior?” “How is Doe attempting to achieve the happiness that all of us want?” If we do this, when someone hurts others, we do not suffer as much, and our emotional energy is not sapped due to hatred and ill will. 

The second practice is a meditation that involves the use of the silent repetition of statements about harming behavior we are exposed to.  After sitting and breathing mindfully for a few minutes to become present and grounded, we can say to ourselves “Doe is lying, because he’s ignorant.”  We can say the first half of the statement on the inbreath and the second half on the outbreath.  Instead of Senator Doe, you can insert the name of any person, institution, nation, political party, or group.  Instead of “lying” you can insert violent, bigoted, impatient, insensitive, vengeful, cheating, kills, steals, and so on.  After repeating “Doe is lying, because he’s ignorant” six or seven times I like to conclude by saying “Just as I wish to be happy, Doe wishes to be happy” a few times and then continue in this way with the next person or group of people who are upsetting me by causing harm. 

These practices can help us be much more at peace with the deeply disturbing events of the present world—but they only work if we actually do them.  I invite you to make the effort.  It’s definitely worth it.

 

 

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