Spiritual Development 
The Roots of Good and Evil: An Anthology by Nyanaponika Thera
|Contents| I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII |
The Wheel Publication No. 251/253
Copyright © 1977
Buddhist Publication Society
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Contents
I.Basic Explanations
1.Definitions
Comment
The Range of the Six Roots
2.The Commentarial Definitions of the Unwholesome Roots
3.The Commentarial Definitions of the Wholesome Roots
4.The Nature of the Wholesome Roots
5.The Diversity of the Unwholesome Roots
Comment
II.General Texts
6.Overcoming Birth and Death
7.Mara's Prisoner
8.Crossing the Ocean
9.The Three Fires
From the Commentary by Bhadantacariya Dhamapala
10.Three Inner Foes
Comment
III.The Roots and Kamma
11.The Cause of Action
Comment
12.The Ten Ways of Action
Comment
13.The Roots of the Ten Unwholesome Ways
14.Rebirth and Its Cessation
Section I
Section II
Comment on Section II
15.The Exposition of Prevalence(ussada-kittana)
IV.The Social Significance of the Roots
16.From the Kalama Sutta
17.Why Give Up the Roots of Evil?
18.The Visible Teaching
Comment
19.Four Types of People
20.The Roots of Violence and Oppression
Comment
V.The Removal of the Unwholesome Roots
21.The Tripple Gem and the Abandoning of the Evil Roots
Comment
22.It Can Be Done
Comment
23.The Arising and Non-Arising of the Roots
Comment
24.Five Methods for Removing Unwholesome Thoughts
Comment
25.For One's Own Sake
26.The Noble Power
Comment
VI.Removal through Mindfulness and Insight
27.To be Abandoned by Seeing
Comment
28.From the Satipatthana Sutta
29.Beyond Faith
30.The Visible Teaching
Comment on Texts 28-30
31.Removal through the Comtemplation of Feelings
Comment
VII.The Goal
32.The Visible Nibbana
33.What is Nibanna?
34.Two Aspects of Nibbana
35.The Happiness of Liberation
Notes
Introduction
The Buddha has taught that there are three roots of evil: greed, hatred and delusion. These three states comprise the entire range of evil, whether of lesser or greater intensity, from a faint mental tendency to the coarsest manifestations in action and speech. In whatever way they appear, these are the basic causes of suffering.
These roots have their opposites: non-greed, non-hatred and non-delusion. These are the three roots of good: of all acts of unselfishness, liberality and renunciation; of all expressions of loving-kindness and compassion; of all achievements in knowledge and understanding.
These six mental states are the roots from which everything harmful and beneficial sprouts. They are the roots of the Tree of Life with its sweet and bitter fruits.
Greed and hatred, maintained and fed by delusion, are the universal impelling forces of all animate life, individually and socially. Fortunately, the roots of good also reach into our world and keep the forces of evil in check, but the balance is a precarious one needing to be preserved by constant watchfulness and effort. On the level of inanimate nature, too, we find counterparts to greed and hatred in the forces of attraction and repulsion, kept in their purposeless reactive movement by inherent nescience which cannot provide a motive for cessation of the process. Thus, through an unfathomable past, the macrocosm of nature and the microcosm of mind have continued their contest between attraction and repulsion, greed and hatred; and unless stopped by voluntary effort and insight, they will so continue for aeons to come. This cosmic conflict of opposing energies, unsolvable on its own level, is one aspect of dukkha (unsatisfactoriness): the ill of restless, senseless movement as felt by a sensitive being.
On the human level, too, we see that man, who proudlybelieves himself to be a 'free agent' - the master of his life and even of nature - is in his spiritually undeveloped state actually a passive patient driven about by inner forces he does not recognize. Pulled by his greed and pushed by his hatred, in his blindness he does not see that the brakes for stopping these frantic movements are in his reach, within his own heart. The brakes are the roots of good themselves, which can be cultivated to such a degree that greed, hatred and delusion are utterly destroyed.
Though we have spoken of the six roots as being 'roots of good and evil', our use of the terms 'good' and 'evil' is provisional, a simplification chosen to introduce this teaching by familiar terms. In the Buddhist texts they are called the roots of the wholesome (kusala-mula) and the roots of the unwholesome (akusala-mula). And thus we, too, shall generally call them.
This differentiation of terms marks an important distinction, for the 'spread' of the mental states called roots is much wider and deeper than the moral realm to which the words 'good' and 'evil' refer. The distinction may be defined as follows. An intentional action performed by body or speech is immoral- an evil or a 'sin'- when it is motivated by the unwholesome roots and is intentionally and directly harmful to others.This constitutes socially significant immorality, for which it is the criterion. Such actions are termed unwholesome bodily or verbal kamma. Thoughts associated with these unwholesome roots, wishing the harm of others, constitute individuallysignificant immorality, for which they are the criterion. They include thoughts such as those of injury, murder, theft, fraud and rape, and also false ideologies leading to the harm of others or condoning such harm. Whether or not these thoughts are followed by deeds or words, they constitute unwholesome mental kamma.
When greed, hatred and delusion, in any degree, do not cause intentional harm to others, they are not evil or immoral in the strict sense of our definition. However, they are still kammically unwholesome in that they maintain bondage and lead to unpleasant results. Similarly, the term 'wholesome' extends beyond socially significant morality to comprise also what is individually beneficial, such as acts of renunciation and attempts to understand the nature of reality.
The recent crisis of theistic faith which has taken hold in the West has brought in its trail a moral crisis as well. For many, belief in God has been shattered, and often those who lose their belief in God fail to see any convincing reason for morality without a divine sanction coming down from above. Left without a sound foundation for ethics, they either accept materialistic political ideologies or allow their conduct to be guided by self-interest. Yet we also find today a growing number of people seeking better alternatives. To them the Buddha's teaching on the wholesome and unwholesome roots provides a criterion of good and evil that is neither theological nor authoritarian but experiential, one with a sound psychological basis offering an autonomous pragmatic motivation for avoiding evil and choosing the good.
The social and political motivations for moral conduct proposed to modern man may not openly contradict the basic sentiments of morality, but as their structures are bound to specific historical conditions and reflect the varying selfinterests and prejudices of the dominant social group, the values they propose are highly relative, lacking universal validity. In contrast, Buddhist ethics, being based on psychological fact and not on external contingencies, provides a core of moral principles inherently free from relativistic limitations, valid for all time and under all circumstances. By introspection and observation, we can understand that the unwholesome roots are undesirable mental states, productive of suffering for ourselves and others; and since it is our common nature to avoid suffering and to desire happiness, we can understand that it serves our own long-range interest as well as the good of others to restrain actions born of these roots and to act in ways motivated by their wholesome opposites. A brief survey of the evil roots will make this clear.
Greed is a state of lack, need and want. It is always seeking fulfilment and lasting satisfaction, but its drive is inherently insatiable, and thus as long as it endures it maintains the sense of lack.
Hatred, in all its degrees, is also a state of dissatisfaction. Though objectively it arises in response to undesired people or circumstances, its .true origins are subjective and internal, chiefly frustrated desire and wounded pride. Buddhist psychology extends the range of hatred beyond simple anger and enmity to include a variety of negative emotions - such as disappointment, dejection, anxiety and despair - representing misguided reactions to the impermanence, insecurity and imperfection inherent in all conditioned existence.
Delusion, taking the form of ignorance, is a state of confusion, bewilderment and helplessness. In its aspect of false views, delusion issues in dogmatism; it takes on a fanatical, even obsessive, character, and makes the mind rigid and encapsulated.
All three unwholesome roots lead to inner disharmony and social conflict. In Tibetan paintings they are depicted at the very hub of the Wheel of Life,f1 symbolically represented by a cock, a pig and a snake, turning round and round, catching each other's tails. The three unwholesome roots, indeed, produce and support each other.
The root of greed gives rise to resentment, anger and hatred against those who obstruct the gratification of desire or compete in the chase to gain the desired objects - whether sensual enjoyment, power, dominance or fame. In this way greed leads to conflict and quarrels. When frustrated, instead of producing enmity and aversion, greed may bring about grief, sadness, despair, envy and jealousy - states which also come under the heading of hatred. The pain of deprivation and frustration again sharpens the keenness of desire, which then seeks an escape from pain by indulging in other kinds of enjoyment.
Both greed and hatred are always linked with delusion. They are grounded upon delusion and, on their part, produce still more delusion as we pursue the objects we desire or flee from those we dislike. Both love and hate blind us to the dangers besetting our pursuits; they lead us away from our true advantage. It is the delusion beneath our love and hate that really blinds us, delusion that leads us astray.
The basic delusion, from which all its other forms spring, is the idea of an abiding self the belief in an ego. For the sake of this illusory ego men lust and hate; upon this they build their imagination and pride. This ego-belief must first be clearly comprehended as a delusive viewpoint. One must pierce through the illusion of self by cultivating right understanding through penetrative thought and meditative insight.
Though the wholesome and unwholesome roots are individual mental states, their manifestations and repercussions have the greatest social significance. Each individual in society rises up at once to protect himself, his loved ones, his property, security and freedom, from the greed, hatred and delusions of others. His own greed, hatred and ignorance may in turn arouse others to anxious concern and resentment, though he may not be aware of this or care about it. From all this there results an intricate interlocking of suffering - suffering caused to others and suffering experienced oneself. Hence the Buddha repeatedly said that the unwholesome roots cause harm both to oneself and to others, while the wholesome roots are sources of benefit for both the individual and society (See Texts 16-20).
The wholesome and unwholesome roots are of paramount human concern on all levels. As the originating causes of kamma, our life-affirming and rebirth-producing intentional actions, they are the motive powers and driving forces of our deeds, words and thoughts. They mould our character and our destiny and hence determine the nature of our rebirth. Being dominant features in the structure of the mind, the unwholesome roots are used in the Abhidhamma Pitaka for the classification of unwholesome consciousness and also for a typology of temperaments. All stages of the path to deliverance are closely concerned with the wholesome and unwholesome roots. At the very beginning, the coarsest forms of greed, hatred and irresponsible ignorance have to be abandoned through virtue (Sila), while in the advanced stages the aids of meditation (samadhi) and wisdom (panna) have to be applied to a deeper-reaching removal of the unwholesome roots and to the cultivation of the wholesome ones. Even Arahatship and Nibbana - the consummation of the great quest - are both explained in terms of the roots: as the extinction of greed, hatred and delusion.
This wide-ranging significance of the Buddha's teaching on the roots places it at the very core of the Dhamma. Showing the distinct marks of a fully enlightened mind, it is a teaching simple as well as profound, and hence accessible on many levels. The fact that greed, hatred and delusion, in their extreme forms, are the root causes of much misery and evil should be painfully obvious to every morally sensitive person. Such an initial understanding, open to commonsense, may well grow into full comprehension. It may then become the insight that moves one to enter the path to deliverance - the eradication of greed, hatred and delusion.
Within the framework of the Buddha's teaching, the Roots of Good and Evil have found their place in a great variety of contexts. To illustrate this by an ample selection of Buddhist texts - almost entirely taken from the discourses of the Buddha - is the intention of the following pages.
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