Siddhartha and the demon

Cover of Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment

In his book, “Buddha: a story of enlightenment”, Deepak Chopra describes an incident when Siddhartha comes face to face with the demon Mara. The demon circles Siddhartha’s mind, trying to find a weakness, a crack through which he may enter and control the young prince. But Siddhartha finds a space of peace in his mind. He learns something about demons, the mythological symbols for fear, greed, and suffering. Siddhartha learns that “demons enter the mind when we resist them. The stronger our efforts to fortify ourselves against temptation, the stronger temptation has us in its grip.” (page 95)

This is the same lesson that Jesus taught when he instructed us to “turn the other cheek” and "resist not evil" (Matthew 5:38-39). It is also a basic principle of Vipassana meditation that one should be aware of all the physical sensations of the body, while remaining equanimous towards them. This is also the basis of the practice of forgiveness as taught by A Course in Miracles. If you do not resist that which disturbs you, it ceases to hold power over you. You no longer invest energy in it, and so it dissolves naturally.

A Course in Miracles explains this in psychological principles. It states that the world as you see it is a projection. Therefore, to attack anything that you perceive, whether it is an image you see outside yourself, or a thought or experience inside your mind, is to attack yourself. As long as you believe in attack and resistance, you will create suffering for yourself.

Buddha talks about the Dharma, the natural law. The way the universe and the mind work. The Hebrew tradition similarly uses the word Torah, also translated as law. What both these concepts hint at is the idea that there is a certain machinery to the mind. There are natural laws which produce inevitable results. If you try to punch your fist through a wall, it will hurt. If you try to break the laws of mind, you will suffer.

None of this has anything to do with divine retribution. It is simply the way nature works. If you live a life of attack you will suffer simply because you are creating suffering for yourself.

It has long been my belief that any truth which can claim the title of truth must be universal. In this sense I am a comparative religious scholar. If you have many wise people from different traditions, the truth will be the space where their teachings are identical. The more one studies different systems, the more you realise that, while the teachers used different metaphors, they almost invariably gave the same practical instructions. Those who think there are big differences between Christianity and Buddhism are only correct at the level of theory. At the practical level, however, they often share remarkable similarities, especially when one returns to the core teachings of the original founders, and not those of disciples or later teachers.

If we are looking for a universal system of practice, a universal spirituality, then we can find it. The tools are out there. The basic principles of harmlessness, of nonviolence, of forgiveness, defencelessness, love, peace, tolerance – these are all there. All that is required is that we release our individual mythologies that so often cause division, and embrace each other as brothers and sisters based on these universal principles.

We are mythologizing creatures that believe in difference and separation. I think it is about time that we let such childish things go and find our common humanity, our common ability to be spiritual in the true, practical sense of the word. We need people who are willing to live a spiritual life, not spend their time arguing about spiritual theories that hardly deserve the name.

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