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The devil is not what you think
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Satan. The devil. Beelzebub. Lucifer. The Ruler of Hell. The very idea of this supreme evil doer is enough to make people turn away in fear.
Returning home after a winter vacation in Mexico, I sat next to a pleasant and gregarious young woman. Once airborne, I decided to open my briefcase and review several provocative passages from a book I had been reading. “What are you reading?” asked my seatmate. I held up the book, Living with the Devil. .jpg)
“Oh,” she said, clearing her throat. She then removed her arm from the armrest between us and turned away. That’s when it occurred to me that the title of that book might freak out some people. Her reaction was pretty clear, and she didn’t look at me or speak to me for the remainder of the flight.
Don’t look. Make a cross with your fingers. Stay clear.
Whether or not you believe in a personification of the devil, this archetype of evil is embedded in the collective subconscious. I have long believed that the most dangerous of devils is the one who appears as an ally. This version of the devil is the one who appears in the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. In the story, the external wilderness is a mirror of the wilderness within us.
The temptations are threefold, feed the hungry now: turn stones to bread; show everyone that God will protect you: jump off a cliff and the angels will catch you; bow to the devil: you will rule the world as you please. To all three Jesus says no.
The conventional interpretation of this drama is that Jesus was able to resist because he was the unsullied savior whose purity was such that it could redeem the sins of the world. This conventional interpretation seeks to make the theological point that Jesus was not like every other human being that’s ever lived.
Reading Stephen Batchelor’s book opened me to a deeper interpretation of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. In Living with the Devil, Batchelor offers a perspective of the Buddha’s struggle with Mara, the Buddhist version of the evil one.
Written five hundred years before the stories of Jesus’ temptation, the Buddhist story tells how Mara tempts and stretches Buddha in every conceivable way. As in the Jesus story, Buddha is tempted by the seductive idea of being able to save the world. When Buddha resists, Mara harnesses the forces of nature to terrify the Buddha. First there are explosions, then earthquakes, fires, and ferocious storms. Mara was so good with special effects that it seemed to the Buddha as if the world was splitting open.
Still the Buddha resists. He continues to remain in a state of equanimity as Mara appears in the form of a giant elephant, a king cobra, and an ox. Mara appears in the natural world in all its glory and horror, says Batchelor. And like Jesus, the Buddha remains unshakable.
The Jesus and Buddha temptation stories are not identical. Yet in both, the devil does not try to tempt them toward evil, per se. The devil, says Batchelor, tempts them to believe that life is a puzzle to be solved. Satan and Mara make the same promise: Do this one thing and everything will be perfect. Here. Believe this, meditate on that and you will find the answer, experience salvation, reach enlightenment. You will get everything you want. But the Buddha refuses to give in to this interpretation of reality.
Written at different times and in different cultures, these narratives point to the same devil. For both the Buddha and Jesus, the devil becomes a projection of the desire to reduce the meaning of life to a formula or fixed remedy in the hope that we will be happy. This is my personal devil.
The devil I know tempts me to believe there is only one answer to the riddle of life.
The devil is that which seeks to limit us, confine us, fix our horizons and want to bring all ambiguity to an end. What if the devil is that part of us that tempts us to jump to conclusions or leap upon answers because answers will make us feel secure?
I often hear people speak of the spiritual journey as if it were a destination vacation. If we are spiritual enough, we’ll get there; we’ll arrive and finally get saved or enlightened. We all want certainty. We all want to believe that if we find the right formula, get the right belief, or follow the one true path, everything will turn out exactly as we want it to.
The deeper temptation is to believe that it’s possible to fix life as we know it. This is the same devil that appeared to Jesus and the Buddha.
What if the deeper devil is not some being that tempts us to do bad things but the inner voice that tells us we know the truth and everyone who disagrees is wrong?
What if the real devil is not what we think it is?
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