Customer Reviews

Living with the Devil

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is an interesting and intelligent approach to the dualistic struggle of Good and Evil that is rooted deeply in the human character. Most of the expositions are Buddhist, but parallels in literature and in other religions are also considered with cultural poise and maturity. (Although the author used to be a monk in the Tibetan and Zen traditions, the Pali Nikaya is the predominant source of his quotations.) Many subtle points in Buddhist philosophy and meditation practice are made surprisingly accessible in lucid and poetic prose. If you have read "Verses from the Center: A Buddhist Vision of the Sublime," you will find that the author's wonderful explanations of "contingency," "emptiness" and "path" are reintroduced in this book. Yet, Buddhism goes beyond the moral connotations of Evil and Good: the meditator looks directly at Concept and Reality, at Fabrication and Truth. Freedom from suffering is ultimately freedom from all fixations, or "absence of resistance" as the author aptly puts it.

This book could serve as a better introduction to Buddhism than most books that are so dry and doctrinal they put you to sleep. If you are a Buddhist scholar or meditation practitioner, read it too, as it may give you a few fresh perspectives (or take away some of your beloved opinions). Enjoy the book, and its reminder: There is no Buddha without Mara; there is no Nirvana without Samsara.

I feel like Batchelor is someone who truly wants to face existence as it is and find an authentic respond to it. Consequently, his insights were really heart-felt. He is like the stubborn kid on the block who refuses to go home until he has resolved the question about the stars.

Living With the Devil has helped me to create a different perspective on mortality. For example, as he had suggested that our existence is "contingent rather than necessary."

To illustrate this point the best, I will give an example of how it helps me in my specific situation. I am an Asian immigrant in America. And just few weeks ago, I was walking one early morning to class on a college campus and saw a white football player type of person walking toward me. That morning I was in a fairly good mood and was in fact planning on saying hi to that person, despite the fact that few hate crime incidents had just happened in the last couple of weeks on campus and I was fairly frustrated because not a lot of people including the faculties, which were essential, were willing to participate and show support in the discussion about the hate crimes after they had happened. Anyway, as we are about to approach each other, he suddenly cut in front of me, so that I had to actually force my self to stop so that I don't bump into him. I looked at him in surprise and he gave me a nasty stare. PLEASE NOTE: this is not a racial comment, it can happen to anyone, for example, maybe in the case of a Chinese soldier to a Tibetan in Tibet.

I had thought about this incident and couldn't really think of anything. I am like 6-3, so if I have to fight I can, but I am also a psychology major and am interested in public service, so there is a conflict in me. What is more important is that I feel like I might look at white people more negatively afterwards and I really don't want to do that.

Then I read Batchelor's book. My solution is to look at the whole incident as a contingent event. I reason,
1st If I were to brush my teeth that morning or ate my breakfast, I would not have encountered him.
2nd what happens is not personal, it can be anyone else of my race, so it is really about him.
3rd Next, I just accept him as he is. Just like I accept a tiger; a tiger for some reason by nature or nurture functions differently, though it is potentially threatening to me, but I don't hate a tiger, in fact I think tigers are exotic and beautiful.

Instead of projecting my self-centered compulsive reactivity (that has helped our ancestors to survive though-out natural selection) onto the contingent world, (which freely plays itself), I face myself.

I face my own biological and psychological self-preserving compulsions. One's life is "contingent rather than necessary", there is no special reason why so and so bla bla bla, our urge to think of life as a story that revolves around us is a trick that the "devil" plays on us. We live in that fixation or routine way of thinking as if they are necessary because somehow they are special.

Fixations become a restraining routine or "devil's circle" that just repeats itself again and again. The problem and challenge that Batchelor points out is radical and unconventional in many ways. As you will see if you read the chapter "Fear and Trembling" about a nun who is fearless in the face of the possibility that she might be molested and her respond to the "devil" or her own biological and psychological fear is even more magnificent as the nun Uppalavanna says,

"Though a hundred thousand rogues just like you might come here, I stir not a hair, I feel no terror; even alone, Mara, I don't fear you. I am freed from all bondage, therefore I don't fear you, friend."

I ordered this book because I have been a student of both Eastern and Western views on Good and Evil, both in practical and philosophical terms. I gave the book four stars because I don't think Batchelor goes deeply enough into "the Devil" in the title. The Problem of Evil is an idea that plagues every society, and there is not much written about it from a Buddhist perspective.

Don't get me wrong; he has a helpful (especially because non-theistic) hypothesis. He has made a contribution to the thinking on this vast topic.

The best thing about this book is the prose. As always, Batchelor writes poetically, almost lyrically. It is a pleasure to read. Some might find it a book to be savored, and lingered over, and some might find, as I did, that it can be read and enjoyed in brief snatches.

Batchelor does a wonderful job of putting Buddhist thought into understandable language, and of making the ancient texts relevant to modern experience. For practitioners of Buddhism, like myself, this book can enhance one's understanding of any number of elements of Buddhism (e.g., meditation on the breath, having a body, human relationships, the idea of engaged Buddhism). I would imagine that for non-Buddhists, besides being exposed to a clear exposition on basic Buddhist philosophy, this book demonstrates how Western and Buddhist thinkers concur on the problem of evil in important ways.

Coming from a very religious family and having been educated in Catholic Schools and following the Christian faith most of my life, I already thought I knew what the war between good and evil was, especially with studying history and philosophy in college.

I found this book very easy to read, most noteably the parts between Buddha and Mara, the Buddhist's counterpart of Christ and the Devil. Other areas in the book I found difficult to follow, especially since I haven't studied Buddhism indepth as I did Christianity. But what the book tells its readers is how evil is everywhere, how easy it is to fall into a cycle that is acting as an agent of evil, how to break from it, etc etc. If you have ever seen Star Wars, more specifically The Empire Strikes Back, you can see parallels between Yoda and Buddhism, especially where when it gets into a meditation on how to be at peace with oneself within a world filled with obligations, stress, problems and chaos. This is an easy book to read and would recommend it to those who are interested in meditation, becoming at peace with theirselves, and finding out who they are and where they are going.

Neitzsche asks - "Who painted the devil on the world's wall? " and echoing the ancients, Robert Graves asks: "Who cleft the devils foot? " Reading this book might make you re-think these questions for real.

In the West, the Christian legacy has left us uneasy about the 'dark, instinctive' side of ourselves. Stephen's book has the merit of making us see that we have something to learn from the 'dark side' of ourselves. As numerous psychologists' couches would tell us, if they could speak, we pay a heavy price for failing to listen, splitting ourselves in the process.

This book has interesting things to say about this process of learning. In Chinese terms, its yin and yang, and we might view the dark side of ourselves as the fruitful bathos or dark ground required for shoots of light to grow. Most of Stephen's observations concern what might be called the inevitable dialogue between the dark and light side of ourselves, in which the dark side doesn't preponderate, but merely hinders. For Stepnhen, it is all tied up with clinging, blocking the flow, damming the stream of life.

However, as with so much literature of this type, which falls into the 'self-help' category, questions concerning 'evil' on a macrocosmic scale are hardly addressed at all. One might ask what bearing these observations have on something like the rise of Nazism and the appearance of death camps? Such issues touch on the problem of collective unconsciousness and the collective shadow. Seen from that perspective, a philosophy of 'letting go' and 'letting things happen' would seem to be double-edged. In one sense, the dangers of the modern world stem from a lack of reflection or reflective awareness, rather than an excess of it. Some things need to be 'resisted' - either in our immediate, personal lives, as well as our collective lives at large. Still, at least, if we are in touch with the 'devil' or 'mara' in ourselves, we are that less likely to locate the devil elsewhere, or in someone else.

Stephen Batchelor nails this topic with beautiful articulation. He uses many references, most especially from his own teaching of Buddha Dharma, to capture the reality of this concept of the devil in our daily lives. The devil is in the details of our lives, weaved into the fibers of our existence, and the author reveals the workings of satan, or Mara, as the very product of our ego-driven selves. Stephen pulls from Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other Eastern mystic traditions, psychology, science, and art to drive home the point of the intricacies of the dichotomy of humankind. This book is a fascinating, eye-opening read that even non-Buddhists can enjoy.

Living With the Devil was so deeply affecting I had to slow down to read and absorb it. I didn't want it to end and, because I'd borrowed the book, knew I had to have it as part of my permanent library so ordered it. I raved about it so much a friend gave me a copy so now I have one to keep and one to lend. I'm reading it for the second time which is very unusual for me and am marking the passages which resonate so I can come back, on the fly, and find them quickly. Never have I had a clearer understanding of Mara or the obstacles in life. Ones we create and ones we encounter on our journey. Batchelor has an uncanny way of articulating complexities and ambiguities in a highly accessible manner.

I will not unpack here the content of Batchelor's seamlessly written book. It's a meditation on being true to one's own existential struggles, or longing for truth if you will. That alone for me warrants reading it. Rarely is a book so uncompromisingly honest.

Stephen Batchelor has written a superb analysis of the shadow part of human psychology as conceptulised in Indian Buddhism by the idea of the demon Mara. Compared to our "western" notion of the "devil" as a personified daimonic entity, Mara in Batchelor's Buddhism is less of a persona and more of a psychological force that eclipses our better selves, makes end-runs around our good intentions(with which hell is often paved),and messes us up in ways that we ourselves mess up in our getting along in the world because of our ignorance, greed and aversion (what Buddhists call the three poisons.

Batchelor does not hold with dualistic notions of Mara and the Buddha. As he says, the Buddha and Mara are one. Why does he go that far? He says this because he views the Buddha as human like the rest of us, not as a superhuman being with magical powers. Buddha is not a god.
He demonstrates from a close study of many of the canonic Pali texts times when the Buddha was afflicted--by doubt, by enemies, by annoyance, by negative emotions. (In one famous episode he calls his competitive, manipulative monk cousin, Devadatta, a lickspittle.)

The negative shadow side of each and every personality is forever in some kind of play because it stems from our prehistoric ancestors' needs to be on guard, ready for fight or flight at any time. But this reactiveness of our personalities--although probably it can never be eliminated--can be limited by the steady work of Buddhist practice, especially the practice of insight meditation. The goal is not some state of transcendance, but rather the incremental growth of insight into the work/action of ourselves in the world and with other humans, to the point that we are able to develop more caring and more compassion in our ability to identify with others, and less hatred, lust, and delusion (the daily paranoia).

So Batchelor's idea of Mara is not that of an occult demon to be controlled by rituals and magic. Mara is our shadow, or negative aspects that need to become apparent in our awareness, and dealt with. It's about living the freedom of not suppressing our demonic capabilities or projecting them onto others, but by learning to recognise the destructiveness that often rules our actions and thoughts. As Batchelor says: "Buddha and Mara are figurative ways of portraying a fundamental opposition within human nature. While 'Buddha' stands for a capacity for awareness, openness, and freedom, 'Mara' represents our capacity for confusion, closure, and restriction."

A great book--highly recommended for anyone not bogged down by dogmatic views on Buddhism or human psychology.

This is one of the books you will read in life that you know will change the way you process the world. From the first page I was thinking this book is goning to illuminate things as I have never seen them, and that it did.You can't go wrong reading this regardless of your beliefs.Blessings