Where does evil and corruption begin?

Evil and corruption begin in the human heart.  Think of the real cause of evil and corruption to be like a weakened spiritual system within the human heart, much like a weak immune system.  We have been feeding our human heart a lot of feel good nonsense.  And we wonder why we are caught in the web of evil and corruption.

Every human being has a natural predisposition towards good and evil without much wisdom to be able to distinguish one from the other.  In Buddhism this is the condition of ignorance or avidyā.  Even the finest education will not help us to do good and avoid evil.  Nor will following Buddhist regula enable us to distinguish between the unconditioned and the conditioned. 

Deluded perceptions of this world into which we have been cast at birth only serve to operate against us in the long run.  At best we can only hope to survive without having to bear too much pain.  Still, within us at the core of our being lies a continuity that ensures our rebirth, in fact, many more rebirths. 

Our strong desire for the conditioned has made us what we are.  This desire has given us much evil that cannot be easily dissolved by the goodness we have accumulated since it is so little.

We insist that we don’t deserve it.  Yet, we know so little about our universe and even less about our Earth and ourselves.  Human history has perhaps more downturns than upturns.  Nations fail has do humans.  As long as we continue to believe that evil is external rather than watch over our own heart we will continue to fall prey to our own deep-seated ignorance.

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The Zennist

Author of The Zennist blog since 2007.

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