Islam also believes in the Adam and Eve stories, but once more has a different take on it. The Qur'an says that we are each given the capacity to recognize God in the myriad aspects of life and to act as his agents in caring for all things. However. we also have a latent tendency to forget God, to forget our work in the world. And when we do that we begin to act in harmful ways. Forgetting God and our work can become a habit or remembering God and our work can become a habit.
Muslim theologians say that although we have a proclivity to forget, God has given us the capability to remember and sends us reminders throughout our lives to help us. The solution to evil is to take advantage of the reminders and remember God and who we are. When we forget, as we naturally will, we will be reminded and given the opportunity to again act according to our capability and responsibility. But the more often we act from a state of forgetfulness, the more we will cause harm in the world instead of being its caretakers.
Hinduism and Buddhism come at the problem from a different direction. They see an eternal Truth at the core of everything; a Truth from which we derive our being and in which we exist. But we live our lives oblivious to the Truth and instead pursue all that is inconstant, impermanent, and illusory. Our physical self, our emotional self, our mental self, are all just the scaffolding, the temporary, transitional circumstances meant to create the conditions which promote a conscious awareness of the ultimate Truth of life, that lead us to experience ultimate Truth as our enduring existence.
But, instead of awakening our soul to its Truth, we are continually distracted by the desires of the mind, emotions, and body themselves. We are always trying to indulge them, satisfy them. The more we pursue these chimeri goals, the more out of sync we become with the ultimate reality of all things.
And that leads us straight down the primrose path of self-deception, self-indulgence, and inevitably bad behavior which causes harm to ourselves, to others and to the natural world. Every action, thought and word leaves impressions on our mind and predispose our future words, thoughts and actions. So we become increasingly addicted to indulging our desires, always seeking to satisfy our wants, which only binds us more and more in ignorance and generates actions that lead to harm.
And it turns out that indulging desires doesn't actually bring satisfaction anyway. Gratifying our impulses, cravings and appetites only increases them, making us want more and more. The more we try to satisfy our urges, the more they intensify and escalate and the less satisfied we become. Talk about running up a blind alley to dig a bottomless pit.
The solution in both Buddhism and Hinduism is that human consciousness is capable of profound transformation. By deliberately and repeatedly focusing the mind on the eternal Truth at the heart of all things, the direction of motivations and intentions are re-oriented. As the mind is increasingly directed away from indulgence of desires and toward the essence of truth, it transforms thoughts, intentions and actions.
But of course we don't only ask our religious traditions to find answers about our inner demons of evil - what about non-religious explanations? See next blog for more
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