Evil

Solzhenitsyn once mused that it would be so easy if evil
was an absolute and we could just isolate it and wipe it out,
unfortunately: ‘The battleline between good and evil runs
through the heart of every man.’ The Buddha’s teachings
also indicate that there is no such thing as an absolute evil.
According to Buddhist myth, Mahā-Moggallāna was Māra (the devil) in at
least one of his previous lives (M 50.8); that great saint, both
fully enlightened and a chief disciple of the Buddha, had at
one point been Satan, the Lord of Lies. Or there is the example
of Aṅgulimāla, a mass murderer who became a disciple of the
Buddha and an Arahant (liberated being); and not only an Arahant, but also
protector of expectant mothers and their babies. It is a beautiful
irony that 2,500 years later, his verses are still chanted to
impart blessings to pregnant women.
All this shows that we can never be irremediably lost. Even if
we think these examples are just fairy stories, their symbol-
ism alone is immensely powerful. It suggests that not only
is any situation resolvable, but that anyone may end up as a
saint, a benevolent, radiant presence in the universe, helping
to liberate many other beings. When we line up our concerns
about ‘my mind with its fears, insecurities and lusts’ against
being Māra, and thus the embodiment of unwholesomeness in
the universe, the degree of unskilfulness is incomparable. It
therefore implies that no karmic entanglement is inescapable
– so there’s hope for all of us!

...The Buddha’s fundamental gesture is to be faithful to Reality:
pure presence and absolute non-contention. The action or
stillness which springs forth from that gesture will intrinsically embody the best we can be.

Ajahn Amaro