Aversion to Good,
Aversion to Evil
by Daisaku Ikeda
 The
philosopher and religious writer Simone Weil astutely observed that for writers
of her day "words which contain a reference to good and evil" had
become "degraded, especially those which refer to the good." We see
this increasingly in our own time, when words related to good -- not only
courage but also effort, patience, love and hope -- are met with cynicism and
indifference. Ours is a social climate in which people are perhaps fearful of
being judged by others and hesitate even to utter such words. Unless we boldly
confront cynicism and indifference, we cannot make fundamental and effective
responses.
This undercurrent of social and spiritual malaise has spread rapidly in
recent years. The question, "Why is it wrong to kill people?" was
asked recently on a popular Japanese television program. It then became the
title of a feature series in a magazine and was later published as a book. These
phenomena give us an indication of where the problem lies: When even the
time-honored tenets and virtues articulated in all the major world religions,
such as prohibitions against the taking of human life, are called into question,
one can easily imagine the prevailing attitude toward coercive and violent
behavior such as bullying. I believe we must wake up to the fact that cynicism
and indifference erode society at its roots and are potentially more dangerous
than any individual act of evil.
Two men with whom I copublished a series of dialogues, the renowned Russian
children's author Albert A. Likhanov and Norman Cousins, known as the
"conscience of America," both shared this view. They adamantly warned
against the dangers of indifference and cynicism in the face of evil -- even
more than evil itself -- because these attitudes reveal a decisive lack of
passionate engagement with life, an isolation and withdrawal from reality.
Citing the paradoxical words of Bruno Jasienski, Likhanov warns of the
profound harm apathy inflicts on a young person's soul:
Do not fear your enemies. The worst they can do is kill you. Do not fear
friends. At worst, they may betray you. Fear those who do not care; they
neither kill nor betray, but betrayal and murder exist because of their
silent consent.
In other words, it is the act of averting our eyes from acts of murder or
betrayal that allows such evil to proliferate without end. Similarly, Cousins
makes reference to the following statement by Robert Louis Stevenson:
I hate cynicism a great deal more than I do the devil, unless perhaps the
two are the same thing.
He voices his own deep concern that the defeatism and self-doubt
characteristic of a pessimistic attitude will undermine and destroy such values
as idealism, hope and trust.
A state of life controlled by apathy and cynicism grows immune to emotions of
love or hatred, suffering or joy, and retreats into a barren, makeshift world of
alienation. Indifference toward evil implies indifference toward good. It makes
for a bleak state of life and a semantic space estranged from the vital drama of
the struggle between good and evil.
Children's keen senses quickly detect the apathy and cynicism rampant in an
adult world bereft of values. Perhaps for this reason, adults become uneasy when
they see in children's hearts an eerie and familiar darkness.
Evil, like good, is an undeniable reality. Without evil there is no good, and
without good there is no evil: they coexist and are defined by their
complementarity. Depending on one's response or reaction, evil can be
transformed to good or good to evil. In this sense, they are both relative and
transmutable. We must therefore recognize that both good and evil are defined in
relation to their opposite or "other," and that the "self"
is defined by this dynamic.
"Self" in Absence of "Other"
In Buddhism, we find the concepts of "the oneness of good and evil"
and "the fundamental neutrality of life with regard to good and evil."
As an example, for the historical Buddha Shakyamuni (representing good) to
attain enlightenment and thereby fulfill his purpose in life there had to exist
an opposing, evil "other," in this case his cousin Devadatta, who
sought to undermine and then destroy him. In contrast, the failure to
acknowledge and reconcile oneself with the existence of an opposing
"other" is the basic flaw in an apathetic, cynical approach to life,
in which only the isolated self exists.
A truer, fuller sense of self is found in the totality of the psyche that is
inextricably linked to "other." Carl Jung distinguished between
"Ego," which knows only the outer content of the psyche, and
"Self," which knows its inner content as well and unifies the
conscious and the unconscious. In the world of apathy and cynicism we find only
an isolated sense of self roaming the superficies of the conscious mind -- what
Jung refers to as ego.
The "self" lacking identification with the "other" is
insensitive to the pain, anguish and suffering of the "other." It
tends to confine itself to its own world, either sensing threat in the slightest
provocation and triggering violent behavior, or nonresponsively turning away in
detachment.
I would venture to say this mentality provided the nesting ground of the
fanatical ideologies, such as fascism and Bolshevism, which swept through the
twentieth century. We have more recently witnessed the birth of virtual reality,
which can also, I believe, further obscure the "other." Viewed in this
light, it is clear that none of us can remain a mere spectator or view the
problematic behavior of children as someone else's responsibility.
In the course of a discussion, peace scholar Johan Galtung mentioned to me
that the prerequisite for an "outer dialogue" is an "inner
dialogue."' If the concept of "other" is absent from
"self," true dialogue cannot take place.
Exchanges between two individuals both lacking a sense of "other"
might appear to be dialogue but are in fact simply the trading of one-sided
statements. Communication inevitably fails. Most distressing in this kind of
semantic space -- at once voluble and empty -- is that words lose their
resonance and are eventually stifled and expire. The demise of words naturally
means the demise of an essential aspect of our humanity -- the capacity for
language that earned us the name Homo loquens (speaking man).
Reality can be revealed only through genuine dialogue, where "self"
and "other" transcend the narrow limits of ego and fully interact.
This inclusive sense of reality expresses a human spirituality abounding in
vitality and empathy.
In a lecture I gave at Harvard University in 1991, I stated that the times
require an ethos of "soft power." I suggested that an inner-motivated
spirituality constitutes the essence of soft power and that this derives from
inner-directed processes. It becomes manifest when the soul has struggled
through phases of suffering, conflict, ambivalence, mature deliberation and,
finally, resolution.
It is only in the burning furnace of intense, soul-baring exchanges -- the
ceaseless and mutually supporting processes of inner and outer dialogue between
one's "self" and a profoundly internalized "other" -- that
our beings are tempered and refined. Only then can we begin to grasp and fully
affirm the reality of being alive. Only then can we bring forth the brilliance
of a universal spirituality that embraces all humankind.
 This
article is excerpted from:
Soka Education
by Soka Gakkai.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Middleway Press. ©2001. http://www.middlewaypress.com
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About the Author
Daisaku
Ikeda is president of the Soka
Gakkai International, one of the most important
international Buddhist communities in the world today (12 million members in 177
countries and regions. In 1968, Mr. Ikeda founded the first of many nonsectarian
schools --kindergartens, elementary, middle and high schools as well as Soka
University in Japan -- based on the mission to nurture the lifelong happiness of
the learner. In May 2001, Soka University of America, a four-year liberal arts
college, opened its doors in Aliso Viejo, California. He received the United
Nations Peace Award in 1983. Mr. Ikeda is also the founder of numerous
international cultural institutes, including the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, the Toda
Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research, the Boston Research Center for
the 21st Century and the Institute for Oriental Philosophy. He is the author of
numerous books, which have been translated into dozens of languages, including The
Way of Youth and For
the Sake of Peace.
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