Don't Shame the Devil
He might be your best friend.
“Every angel is terrifying.” (The First Elegy, Rainer Maria Rilke)
Morality gives me the creeps. Having run in some weird circles over the decades, I’ve come across many a glassy-eyed “seeker” who holds their hand over their heart and extols the scriptures, be those west or east. The same person wants to introduce you to their “teacher” and, kiss of death, invite you to tea to rhapsodize about their “journey.” If a man, they might call you “brother” in dulcet, vaguely bi-curious tones. If a woman, they might weep over the dogs at the shelter while picking the lint off their Lululemon stretchy pants.
Give me the messy, meat-eating, sensualist! Give me the girlfriend who day-drinks! Give me the boyfriend on the motorcycle who is very-much bad news and very-much irresistible! Give me life!
Growing up in a western, Manichaean culture, we’re taught strict notions of good-and-evil, and we’ve applied this to our fetishization of eastern philosophy. We speak in absolutes, whether we’re talking the commandments or the dharma, yet when we pry into the stories of India, we find something different and discomfitting:
The demons, the worst-of-the-worst, achieve enlightenment.
In the Indian tale of the goddess Durga and the demon Mahisasura, the goddess incarnates in order to kill the demon who has conquered all the worlds. He’s actually not a bad guy. He’s just to his own people. He can meditate anyone under the table. He’s almost invincible due to a boon he gained after a blistering tapasya, an austere practice, performed for thousands of years. The gods are despondent at being deposed from their heaven. Wandering the wilderness far from the comfort of their palaces, they beg Durga, Big Mama, the goddess, to overthrow their adversary. She can’t deny her children’s pleas for aid, so she rides out on her lion and gives battle against the demon king, who takes one look at her and falls in love and lust. We always desire what destroys us.
After nine nights, Durga, sick of playing around, hacks off his head. The bad guy loses. The good guys are restored. The End.
Or is it? Some versions of the tale say that Mahisasura achieves moksha, enlightenment, when he dies. Some say that he’s reborn as an incarnation of Lord Shiva and is forever entwined with the goddess, his great love.
Mahisasura isn’t the only demon to win instant enlightenment after a fight with one of the great deities. Ravanna, the demon king of Lanka and the antagonist of the Ramayana, one of India’s two greatest epics, attains moksha because he dies at the hands of Rama, an incarnation of Vishnu.
What the devil is going on?
These stories, when read and contemplated, suggest that malefactors sooner achieve the soul’s apotheosis than self-appointed custodians of righteousness. There’s an ironic honesty to the demons. They don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are - power-mad, acquisitive, libidinous - unlike holy folk who perform their goodness like a vaudevillian playing to the back row.
Several years ago, I worked as a journalist at the Washington Blade, the longest continually-running LGBTQ newspaper in the States, and I still have a frisson of schadenfreude when I think back to the story we wrote about Ted Haggard, pastor of a mega-church, who denounced the usual moral punching bags, including, of course, the gays. And then he was caught having ongoing sex with a male prostitute, with whom he did meth. I jigged on his grave. I just couldn’t help myself.
These tawdry episodes don’t only happen in the Christian world; they occur wherever exists rigidity and hypocrisy. Back in 2016, there were sexual harrassment allegations against a teacher in the Jivamukti cult…ooops, I mean “lineage” (an indulgent moniker for something established only 40 years ago). And then there’s Bikram. And Satya Sai Baba. And Swami Satchidananda. And Amrit Desai. And…you get the drift. Each expounded the eternal dharma. Each had a hidden demon who got fed-up with being ignored.
For that’s how the demons work against us – not with their being let loose, but with their being penned. They get bored. They get impatient. They get grouchy, and when they’ve had enough of their stuffy little closet, they find another way out and destroy the illusions we’ve erected around our hollow identities. Our godhood is deposed. Our demons take the throne.
At this juncture, we’re presented with an important decision: Work hard to throw off our demonic tendencies, or integrate god and devil. For there is no difference between the two. Show me a commandment, and I’ll show you fashion. Show me iniquity, and I’ll show you a sacred rite. The demons achieve liberation, because they see the gods for what they are – incomplete. Sanctimony is not a path, except to Hell where live the damned, who cure us of our ignorance and lead us, not to heaven, but to wholeness.