Why is evil so enticing and entertaining — if you are not the target?

The movie Oppenheimer reminded me of the words of the late SGI-UK General Director Richard Causton. Just a few months before his death, he said with his distinctive, deep baritone voice almost gently, "Jussi, remember that evil exists".

We might have the loftiest ideals and intentions, but if we lack a moral compass and ethical grounding, we will be easy prey to evil.

In the movie, Oppenheimer managed to offend a person whose ethics was like a rubber band and whose morale was a slingshot he used to shoot his foes from the shadows using his elastic ethics. That man was Lewi Strauss, the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chairman. As Chairman of the AEC, Strauss was involved in the security clearance hearings of Oppenheimer after the war during the McCarthy era.

In the movie (brilliantly directed by Christopher Nolan and Cillian Murphy ingeniously acting Oppenheimer and Robert Downey Jr. acting with spooky decisiveness Lewis Strauss), the slow-burning of the rage of offended Lewis Strauss was played like a beautiful waltz by Johann Strauss, who was another, and much nicer, composer.

There are no easy fixes to this kind of power game. Leaders on all levels and organisations have to deal with this problem. On the global stage, stakes are higher, but the emotional drivers are the same, making it spooky. Looking at our political, business and community leaders can be a scary business.

Too often, the hunger for power and control is disguised behind a cloak of ethics and high morals. And often also using the systemic leavers ruthlessly to manipulate, suppress and mislead – all in plain sight and looking perfectly democratic, normal and acceptable.

Many of us have been a target of this kind of Straussian music with Machiavellian adaptation. In this article, I look at the problem of evil through a Buddhist concept of the Devil of the Sixth Heaven.

The Devil King of the Sixth Heaven: ancient concept but a very modern problem.

The Buddhist dictionary explains this concept:

The King of devils dwells in the highest or sixth heaven of the world of desire. He is also named Freely Enjoying Things Conjured by Others, the King who makes free use of the fruits of others' efforts for his own pleasure. Served by innumerable minions, he obstructs Buddhist practice and delights in sapping the life force of other beings.

Not a very nice dude. But what has he to do with you and me?

The explanation above indicates that this heavenly monarch oppresses Buddhists and their religious practices trying to lure them away from those practices and become easy prey for negative forces – those demons and evil spirits that the Buddhist scriptures so vividly describe.

It would be a bit otherworldly and esoteric to leave it to the old similes and parables.

Looking closer at the dictionary's explanation, the world of desire jumps out. I am sure that we all are familiar with desires and can accept that it really is a world of its own.

When we enter the world of desires, we are in the cosmic whirlpool of commercialisation, influencers, power-hungry people and manipulation. That's the playground of the Devil King. Those forces are the minions he uses to persuade us to follow his will. We are the paws on his game and easily infested with greed, anger and ignorance when we desire something.

The worst comes true when amid our aspirations and desires, we (sometimes even without any intention) offend an influential person who lets the Devil King in and becomes a vehicle of his will. That's what happened to Oppenheimer.

Lewis Strauss was a respected and sensible man until he felt offended and let his guard down. He became consumed with a singleminded quest to destroy Oppenheimer, seeking revenge, and this vendetta overwhelmed his humane discernment.

The mechanism is universal. Devil King is universal. Psychology has many honorary titles for His Royal Highness, too – like Machiavellianism, authoritarianism, ethical flexibility, narcissism, psychopathy, gaslighting, and dissimulation, to name just a few.

The exciting feature of the Devil King is that he does not care about people who keep their heads down. He knows that they are already at his court. This King starts to act when somebody stands out and propagates and promotes equality, human rights and respect. He cannot hold his horses when somebody challenges his superiority.

The cunning aspect of the Devil Kingd is that he likes to do his work in shadows and secrecy. For him, the Trumps and Putins are amateurs who are never part of the aristocracy of his kingdom. They are henchmen and nothing more.

In the movie, Strauss belongs to the inner circle of the King. He is a faithful and loyal subject. If you want to see how this King works, look behind the curtains, seek the mirrors with fog and connect the dots that don't leave any trace. As a movie about power, Oppenheimer is one of the best and reveals how the King operates.

Why do we have this kingdom and the King?

It's built into our human nature. We are living our lives in life states that go from lower to higher. In the Buddhist canon, these life-states are described as worlds.

Without going into details, we can see that the six lower worlds (Hell or hopeless despair, hunger or greed, animality or the law of the jungle, anger or hatred, tranquillity or humane respect of life and rapture or hedonistic feeling of fulfilment of our desires) are reactive states. The external stimuli will trigger them, and here we go. Devil King's agencies govern these lower worlds. We react, and his clerks whisper to our ears things that keep us going in the vicious cycles of negativity.

It takes efforts to leave that cycle and climb to the so-called noble worlds (Learning or growth, realisation or insights, Boddhissatva or altruism and service and enlightenment or absolute happiness of oneself and others). This effort is our challenge. Every day we must choose between reactive and responsive behaviour.

Lewis Strauss showed how he forgot that simple rule of being a human and let the Devil King possess himself. I am sure you will have examples of that, too.

An example of the Devil King in action.

Recently I heard about a friend of mine.

He was an executive officer of a large organisation for a few years running his large business unit successfully. Right after he took the role, he somehow managed to offend his colleague in front of the executive team. Without going into details, it is safe to say that in an everyday context, it would have been just a little hiccup and remedied by honest conversation, but not in this case.

I happen to know the executive who was offended. She was (and still is) a clever leader who knows where bodies are buried, making her untouchable. She could be sweet when needed and very sour when nobody was observing. She was in the shadows and never made her views fully exposed. But from there, she built her minefields for everybody who offended her.

So, my friend stepped on a landmine called restructure. As the outcome of that explosion, my friend took the volunteer redundancy. The nemesis got what she wanted, the organisation lost one of the best leaders I have seen, and everything happened in "good faith".

So, there are many Strausses in almost any organisation. In the end, I hope we manage to expose these power-hungry composers of catastrophes before too many bombs go off.

The solution is to create value: it's hope for us.

As said earlier, Johann Strauss is a different composer than Lewis Strauss. And there is the hope we have. It's in the concept of value creation.

The Japanese co-founder of the modern Buddhist lay movement Soka Gakkai, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871-1944), was an educator and looked at the world through pedagogy and Buddhism. His concept of value creation makes old Buddhist concepts accessible.

Makiguchi concluded that truth in itself has no value but what we do with it. By creating positive value, we improve the lives of others and ourselves alike. The three components of value creation are beauty, gain and goodness.

Beauty is not just aesthetics but is based on the principle of harmony. Things (people, products, services, life) are beautiful when harmonising with the environment and others. Diversity is beautiful and, in essence, a requirement of beauty.

Gain is the benefit that we enjoy from beauty and goodness. It can be material or immaterial, shared with others to build a better world.

And finally, goodness is the quality of life. A high-quality life becomes a reality when we strive to do our best.

Value creation has the power to weaken and diminish the influence and impact of the Devil King, thereby promoting a better world.

Ancient Buddhist concepts have stood the test of time. Their rich imagery and multilayered similes have vowed into their thousands of years-long fabrics message of profound hope for a better future. The concepts and their interpretations give us tools to live better lives, understand ourselves more and be more accepting when life turns its ugly side to us.

In Buddhism, there is no guilt but an endless potential to create value.

It is up to us to choose between a reactive or responsive way of life. We can choose to let the Devil King rule or stand up and make a Buddhist revolution, another modern Buddhist concept again, but I will write another time about the Human Revolution.

For now, it is enough to say, let's face the music but turn it into a beautiful Johann Strauss waltz instead of Lewis's dark tune.