"Trying to Get Rid Of Evil"

   In an anthology called 21st Century Buddhists in Conversation, David Loy remarks: "Social justice is not a traditional Asian Buddhist concept. It developed in the Abrahamic tradition, goes back to the prophets, and ultimately depends upon the duality between good and evil." (in McLeod, 2015, p.263). Loy goes on to suggest that "We try to separate good and evil, when the reality is that they're two sides of the same coin: we feel good about ourselves when we're fighting against evil, which means we have to find something evil to fight against." (ibid). I think what Loy means here is that the effort to 'fight evil in the name of good' can be extremely self-deceptive, in the sense that it is seeking a particular heightened feeling of 'joie de vivre' it might create in the person. I seem to get a 'kick' out of thinking that evil exists outside of myself and can be eradicated through punishment.  Yet, from a Buddhist perspective, one needs to be careful about what the attachments are behind the decision to fight a perceived evil in the name of 'good'. And the meaning of good always needs to be qualified in these cases.
     This quote is interesting to me, because I find that Buddhist thinkers often focus on the negative intention behind dualistic thinking: I have an idea to fight the 'evil other' in the name of my own personal view of what reality is. What about the effect on others? I am thinking of cases where people reach such a high state of experience or knowledge of how to manage other human beings to act according to what they feel is 'best' or 'right'. Their sense of being able to control others' behavior can easily generalize into some theory of the universe, such as saying "God is on my side" or "Providence is speaking through me". Yet, is it ever really a certainty that anybody in the world can ever have that status of 'being perfectly aligned with the universal order of things.'? This kind of thinking seems to lead to totalitarianism, especially when it leads to a refusal to entertain the ideas or the insights of others and their ideas.
    Can one conceive of a social justice without the fine or absolute divisions of 'good person' vs. 'bad person'? I think it's only possible when people abolish hatred of self and others altogether. How this is done is not easy, but hatred is at the heart of the rejection that people feel, and which in turn leads them to self harming and harming of others. If nobody in the world ever felt hated or felt hatred, there would never be any reason for harming people, or for a society based on punishment, reward and retribution? Would there be any reason why some people receive nothing in life, while others are born with seemingly everything?
   Yet, sadly, it seems that there is as yet no curriculum that can teach people to simply stop hatred and even to love all beings. I think it's because somehow, as people become adults, they tend to be conditioned to thinking in terms of sides, and in doing so lose the ability to imagine a world without hate.


McLeod, M. (ed), (2015). 21st Century Buddhists in Conversation. Boston: Wisdom Publications