BODHISATTVAS AND EVIL

Avalokitesvara, Bodhisattva of Compassion

An exasperated sigh and shake of his head signalled the all-too-familiar pronouncement, "No good deed goes unpunished." My father, a real-life bodhisattva, proved the Buddha's assertion that profound goodness is inevitably attacked by equally profound evil.

My father had proven it over and over again. He was a compassionate, but diligent, policeman in our crowded (1 square mile) city of 40,000 working-class folks. Once he abruptly stopped the car while we were out on his day off to do errands when I was about five. He returned with a mountain of a man. They chatted calmly in the front seat while I tried to figure out what was happening in the back.

We pulled up to the police station. My father told me to come in. While older cops who were hanging around spoiled me with a soda and some candy, my father was busy booking the escaped felon he had picked up. There was no violent scene. There were no harsh words. My father's gentile manners and intense blue eyes were known for their powers ... and resented by many of his more brutish peers.

That was the balance in my father's life. He was loved and respected by many poor and formerly incarcerated citizens. He was disrespected, even mocked, by his superiors and some local politicians. He had to work harder than others to attain promotions. If there was an unpleasant task to be done, his name was first to be chosen. It was common knowledge that he couldn't say no to a community need or a difficult challenge.

Until his death in his 80s, my father routinely reminded me of the inevitable consequences of doing the right thing. He listened with dour interest whenever I shared any experiences from my nursing work in psychiatry and hospice.  I could tell he recognized his influence upon me to do something positive for humanity in my choice of career. I could also tell it brought him sadness, due to his understanding of the balance between good and evil.

And his empathy was certainly justified. My patients generally expressed acknowledgment, if not appreciation, of my intention and work to improve their situations with my skills. Staff under my supervision also seemed cooperative and appreciative of my constant attempts to learn, educate and encourage. I can think of only two serious staff issues which were based in evil irresponsibility or maliciousness in my twenty-year nursing career.

I can list many cases of being harassed or undermined for simply doing my job to the best of my abilities and up to my own ethical standards. The backlash against my good intentions came mostly from peers and supervisors. Some of this did come from homophobic resentment which was never voiced to me directly. Most of it simply represented the evil of jealousy or unrealistic expectations in those who had no mature sense of self.

I do not claim to meet the standard of bodhisattva compassion lived by my deceased father. If his compassion was greeted in some quarters by petty evil, I fully accept that my attempts at doing good would evoke evil responses. My point is that this is a process built into our species, and, perhaps, The Universe. If this is true, then understanding and accepting this nature of good and evil, as a balance or equilibrium, can aid the achievement of detachment from the idea of outcomes as perfectly good or bad.

Trying to be good and do good is the highest form of human practice, in my opinion. But embarking on that practice without deep intelligence about the nature of The Universe and the people in it is a fool's errand. What is perfectly good in the mind of the ignorant religious zealot is often beastly and cruel. What is perfectly evil in the mind of a ignorant traditionalist may simply be the individual manifestation of human, scientific and/or social evolution.

The human mind has the capacity to operate above the dichotomy of good and evil. Perhaps being a bodhisattva is the practice of mindful compassion that is detached from the good-evil polarity of the nearsighted. If this is the case, true bodhisattvas may well be immune to the reactive evil their goodness evokes in their environments. I hope this is true, because we are otherwise trapped in a Universe where good can never overtake evil.