Understanding and Overcoming Evil, Part 2: What Can We Do About It?

 

                In Understanding and Overcoming Evil, Part 1 (August 31), we learned that the Buddha taught that all harmful acts are due to ignorance rather than evil.  So if what we call “evil” is more appropriately seen as ignorance, the question arises: “What do we do about ignorant and harmful behavior when it arises?  Do Buddhist teachings offer us help?” 

                Our typical response to “evil” for most of human history has been to punish those who harm others (make them suffer) in the hope that they will refrain from harming in the future and that others who know about their punishment will be deterred from similar actions. But consider the fact that a 2021 US Bureau of Justice Statistics study found that 66% of people released from prison were re-arrested within three years. At the decade mark, 82% had been re-arrested, and 61% of all prisoners released were back in prison again within 10 years.

                When the US has tried punishment to stop terrorist attacks it has simply created more hatred for the US and increased the number of terrorists.  As Thich Nhat Hanh has noted, “You cannot remove hatred or ignorance with a gun or a by bombing,” nor can it be done with jail time or any other punishment.

My parents (and many other parents) used punishment when I was a child.  I remember being spanked with a wooden paddle, having my mouth washed out with soap, and sometimes being slapped in the face at the dinner table.  These punishments made me angry and resentful toward my parents, and I Iost respect for them—sometimes I even hated them for hurting me just because we disagreed and they were bigger and older. I felt my parents were wrong in treating me this way, and I learned nothing about why I should not behave as I did.   

Because Buddhist teachings see evil as ignorance, they offer a very different approach to curbing harmful behavior.  If we are growing carrots, we don’t blame the carrots if they are not doing well, and we don’t punish them by depriving them of water or light.  Instead, we look for the causes of their not doing well: perhaps they don’t have enough sun or the soil is lacking in nutrients. 

There are four Buddhist teachings that are relevant here, and they all center on removing ignorance.  First, we can teach people to be more mindful and to see how their harming others creates suffering for themselves.  Second, we can introduce perpetrators to the people they have harmed and their families.  Third, we can practice deep listening.  And fourth, we can change the conditions that create people who are capable of inflicting great harm.  Let’s look at these approaches one by one.

We can punish people for behaving badly, but as long as the desire to act that way remains, the behavior will continue to happen.  If I have a desire to exert power over others or take the short road to wealth by breaking contracts and defrauding lenders and customers, I will regularly be looking for opportunities to act on this desire.  But if I no longer want to do it, I have no problem in refraining from doing it. Doing the right thing and my desires will be in alignment. So the question becomes:  How do we go about changing a person’s desires? 

Mindfulness is the key here.  My desires change when I recognize that I am actually suffering, and I see very clearly the connection between what I am doing and the suffering I am experiencing.  Let’s see how this works.

                Suppose I say to myself “I know I should eat healthy food, but I really want to eat things like donuts and my will power is weak and I can’t stop myself.”  If I could change my desires so that I no longer wanted to eat donuts (for example) I wouldn’t even need any willpower and life would be so simple.  I have no desire to eat donuts, so I don’t do it—no problem!  So how do I get there?

                I need to start by paying attention to what is going on, and other people can help me to learn to do this.  I can ask, what is underneath the desire for the donut?  If I sit in meditation with this question, I may find that I eat donuts as a distraction.  But a distraction from what?  And how well does this distraction really work? 

                When I really notice the whole process I may find that:  1) I am feeling anxiety that I wasn’t fully aware of about my job and then 2) I “medicate” it with a donut to make the anxious feelings go away.  3) Next there is a feeling of temporary pleasure, distraction, and relief -- followed by 4) a sugar crash and depression, and then 5) the feeling of anxiety arising all over again. 

                When I really see the suffering and the total futility of what I am doing, and the cost to my health, I find that the desire to do this starts to go away. I see that I was trying to fill a nonmaterial need—the need for meaningful work—with a material thing (a donut), and that continuing to do this can never get me what I really long for.  People do this sort of thing all the time but they don’t see what they are actually doing so they keep doing it.  This kind of noticing is learned through mindfulness meditation.

                This is extremely simple.  If someone is complaining about an unbearable pain in their right hand, and you come along and point out to them that they are gripping a red-hot coal, the desire to grip the coal evaporates as soon as they see the connection between the gripping and their terrible pain.  They simply release the coal, and no will power, special knowledge, training, or therapy is needed. 

                At this point, you may be wondering “What does eating donuts, feeling anxious about my meaningless job, and squeezing a hot coal have to do with stopping the behavior of dictators, fraud artists, or people who support harmful actions by others?”  Just this:  instead of trying to punish or threaten people into behaving better, we can educate them to be more aware so they can see for themselves the folly of what they are doing, and thereby lose their desire to continue doing it.  This approach can be used in working with a family member, friend, neighbor, counseling patient, or a person currently being incarcerated.

                Suppose a person harming others due to their desire for an expensive car, or political power, or instant wealth, or adulation is doing so because they feel worthless and empty.  If we are able to help them see that this will never alleviate feeling worthless and empty, this opens a door to more appropriate actions that will get them what they want.  The harming behavior then drops away.

                However, seeing my own suffering and its causes cannot be just a verbal or intellectual operation.  It is like seeing the connection between stepping off the curb into the path of an oncoming bus and the pain that will inevitably happen.  Because our seeing is so immediate and visceral, there is no desire or temptation to take that step.

                For many people, the first thing needed is helping them to recognize they actually are in pain and to bring that into full conscious awareness.  This comes from mindfulness.

A second type of approach for changing harmful behavior involves arranging for people who have acted badly to personally meet and get to know the people they have harmed by their actions—including other members of the community peripherally effected by what was done.  The purpose of this is to help the pain and suffering they have caused become real to the perpetrator.  This was used very effectively in South Africa when apartheid ended.  A Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created just for the purpose of bringing perpetrators into face-to-face dialogue with the people they had harmed.

This approach even applies to our supporting the mass incarceration and killing of cows, pigs, and chickens in order to support our desire to satisfy a taste preference.  When we meet the animals as individual beings, perhaps at a farm sanctuary, rescue center, or slaughterhouse, their lives and suffering become real to us.  This is often a powerful instrument in changing behavior.  

A third approach involves the practice of deep listening.  Thich Nhat Hanh’s prescription for dealing with terrorists is to ask them why they have hurt us, and then really listen to what they say.  Deep listening is listening without personal agenda, interrupting, or arguing, and it comes from a place of genuine caring and concern.  When this happens, the terrorists’ mistaken perceptions are identified and examined through dialogue. Through open dialogue we can help each other discover where some of their perceptions are accurate and where they are not, and need to change.   

We may also discover that their perceptions of us are actually quite accurate. Perhaps people of the middle East believe that our military presence is a threat to their sovereignty, and that we are also exporting our materialistic and highly sexualized culture to their part of the world.  These actions are seen as is a threat to their traditional religious way of life.  We may realize that some of our own perceptions are untrue and that we ourselves need to change in order to achieve peace.

At a more personal level, there was a time in my life when I shoplifted, vandalized property, and committed petty theft from my employers. This behavior was fueled by my perceptions of living in a rigged and unfair system of hiring practices.  Philosophy teaching jobs had literally a hundred applicants for each job, and I was the wrong race, gender, and sexual orientation in an era of strong affirmative action.  Somehow, I had come to the mistaken perception that I was entitled to the kind of job I wanted, and somehow the universe was supposed to provide it for me.  This mistaken perception was the cause of my resentful behavior.

And fourth, we must discover the conditions that create a person capable of horrible crimes and thus stop the creation of more such people.  People who hurt others have typically been hurt themselves, deprived of caring, lacking in education, and forced to live in a harsh social environment.  We must correct these conditions that create predatory people in the first place.   

In all of these approaches there is no blame, no argument, no lecturing, no threats, and no punishment.  There is just the removal of ignorance by encouraging clear seeing through mindfulness, and genuine caring for the person who is suffering and blindly lashing out at the world.

 

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