The Root of All Evil

Those people who question basic goodness of people, yet are willing to assume all people are essential bad, see the cup as half empty i.e. wallow in their ignorant delusion called Ego.

It is egocentricity that blinds each of us to the goodness of other people. At the same time, the Ego arises due the lie that essentially all people are bad.

How then do we "cure" ourselves of seeing the cup as half-empty?

It cannot be done through intellectualizing a solution as that is merely the Ego's doing.

Instead the Ego must be pacified through love and patience, lest it wield anger to confuse each of us.

For anger is the root of chaos and confusion, and also death and destruction. Indeed, nothing can be accomplished while the mind is beclouded by anger. Any action done in anger will simply be forgotten, and each of us would have to search for the cause, which is merely the Ego vainly grasping, forming attachment to worldliness, rather than rising above it.

Though this be loathe to the religious, the Ego holds itself as God, not the person. When a person sees only evil in other people, that is a reflection of its own inherent evil. For no good thing comes from the action of the Ego.

Am I suggesting the Ego is "satanic"? No, not in the sense of Christian, Muslim or Jewish moralities.

For the Ego is free of "good and evil" yet each of us has the potential for great good or great evil.

Indeed, what we create may be deemed good if we benefit from such action, and evil, if we are consumed by the Five Poisons.

As well, the Ego is neutral throughout such actions, due to the subtle effects of the Seventh Consciousness. Thus it is innocent of evil karma, even though some of the actions of egocentric people may lead to worldliness rather than the Middle Way.

Anger/fear is the worst of the Five Poisons, and from it are derived the other four (attachment/desire, ignorance/delusion, pride, jealousy).

Anger is the root of anxiety with fear its companion. For what is done in anger is due to fear of non-existence of the Ego. Thus anger and fear are what drives a person to commit crimes and even murder.

Attachment/desire is the root of clinging to this world of birth-life-death, because it is based on the illusion of permanence i.e. the reified form of Ego known as the "soul", which is a hallucination about eternal life and immortality, both of which are superstitions.

Both attachment and desire leads to the carnal life of worldliness. It also motivates decadent hedonism, and thus promotes sloth and torpor when the Ego is not driving a person to live a hectic, fast-paced life which is unnatural.

In society today, productivity is deemed good or bad, based on the quickness to produce a marketable commodity. This commodity must be free of religion, and imbued with the essence of secularism. As well, it must have a short shelf-life. Otherwise, profits are lost when a product is long-lasting.

Ignorance and delusion are the root of the Ego's existence. As long as we remain ignorant of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path of the Fourth Noble Truth, we are "free" to become worldly yet become fearful of loss of wealth to the point of risking our lives just to accumulate consumer goods.

Pride is cause of the Ego's downfall. When everything is "me, mine, and I", that's due to pride. For a person filled with pride becomes a braggart, and in vain tries to make himself look good at the expense of others. A wise person would cure himself of pride by developing humility not only because it serves the greater good, but because by serving the good all sentient being by being humble, we generate compassion.

As for jealousy, that is the doing of the Ego, which leads one to fear sharing the limelight with other sentient beings For those of us who has not learn to control jealousy, everyone else is her rival. As well, jealousy unchecked may lead to much evil, including the willingness to harm a rival.

It is as though all the Five Poisons dance around the Ego, as though in worship of it. In actual fact, the Ego never existed in the first place!

For the Ego does not really exist. All that exists is the conception of the Ego. In its most evil incarnation, it is called the soul, and the Buddhist principle of non-self helps the disciple to see the soul as a figment of the imagination and as a reified mirror image of the Ego.

Since the Ego does not exist, so too the soul does not exist. To believe in the soul, one would have to call Buddhism a fiction. Yet all of the Buddhist sutras confirm that Sakyamuni Buddha lived over 2500 years ago.

For it is the Buddha who declared that belief in a permanent soul that reincarnates is tantamount to the root of evil.

Why? Because it leads to suffering.

If the disciple wishes to be free of suffering, then the Eightfold Noble path is the cure.

For the Eightfold Path is the way out of suffering, and relieves the disciple of mental unrest for good.

All it begins is with taking one breath...