On this side of paradise, doing evil seems to come more naturally and certainly more easily than doing good. This is why every religion aims at a radical transformation of the self and provides moral guidelines for becoming holy in God s sight. Every religious tradition also attempts an explanation of evil and, for believers, a means of escape from its grip. Evil is more than the sum of individual acts and omissions. Like gas, it expands upon release.
All religions turn to myths in order to account for the origins of evil.
In the most ancient faiths, evil in the form of chaos precedes the advent of human beings, who merely continue it by opposing divine order. Hinduism and Buddhism both have numerous and overlapping myths involving evil gods and demons. But philosophically they rely on the powerful doctrine of karma, which explains the evil in this life as the fruit of past thoughts and actions in every individual s previous lives. In Buddhism especially, an abundance of bad karma can produce a future rebirth in one of several hells. But for the Buddha, the real evil is existence itself, since all sentient beings are subject to suffering, death and rebirth.