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Living With the Devil: A Meditation on Good and Evil | 
 enlarge | Author: Stephen Batchelor
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
Buy New: $6.24
You Save: $16.71 (73%)
New (5) Used (6) from $5.42
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 708783
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.9
ASIN: B0008102CW
Publication Date: June 1, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A bestselling Buddhist philosopher offers a personal meditation of extraordinary insight.
Whether we are religious or not, the Devil-evil incarnate-is a concept that can still strike fear in our hearts. What if he does exist? What if he is causing all our problems in his determination to keep us from reaching our full potential?
Stephen Batchelor takes the concept of the Devil out of literature and history and brings him to life in his many forms and guises: the flatterer, the playmate, the caring friend, the stranger who offers rest and solace, the person who knows you best and shows you your greatness in the world. And, most of all, as the great obstructer that blocks all paths to goodness and true humility.
For the first time, Batchelor fuses Western literature-Milton, Keats, Baudelaire-with Buddhism and the Judeo-Christian traditions in a poetic exploration of the struggle with the concept and reality of evil. Living with the Devil reveals the voice of a new poet and philosopher for our times.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Simply Brilliant November 11, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Stephen Batchelor nails this topic with beautiful articulation. He uses many references, most especially from his own teaching of Buddha Dharma, to capture the reality of this concept of the devil in our daily lives. The devil is in the details of our lives, weaved into the fibers of our existence, and the author reveals the workings of satan, or Mara, as the very product of our ego-driven selves. Stephen pulls from Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other Eastern mystic traditions, psychology, science, and art to drive home the point of the intricacies of the dichotomy of humankind. This book is a fascinating, eye-opening read that even non-Buddhists can enjoy.
not bad May 31, 2006
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Coming from a very religious family and having been educated in Catholic Schools and following the Christian faith most of my life, I already thought I knew what the war between good and evil was, especially with studying history and philosophy in college.
I found this book very easy to read, most noteably the parts between Buddha and Mara, the Buddhist's counterpart of Christ and the Devil. Other areas in the book I found difficult to follow, especially since I haven't studied Buddhism indepth as I did Christianity. But what the book tells its readers is how evil is everywhere, how easy it is to fall into a cycle that is acting as an agent of evil, how to break from it, etc etc. If you have ever seen Star Wars, more specifically The Empire Strikes Back, you can see parallels between Yoda and Buddhism, especially where when it gets into a meditation on how to be at peace with oneself within a world filled with obligations, stress, problems and chaos. This is an easy book to read and would recommend it to those who are interested in meditation, becoming at peace with theirselves, and finding out who they are and where they are going.
 Who painted the devil on the world's wall? June 27, 2005
18 out of 21 found this review helpful
Neitzsche asks - "Who painted the devil on the world's wall? " and echoing the ancients, Robert Graves asks: "Who cleft the devils foot? " Reading this book might make you re-think these questions for real.
In the West, the Christian legacy has left us uneasy about the 'dark, instinctive' side of ourselves. Stephen's book has the merit of making us see that we have something to learn from the 'dark side' of ourselves. As numerous psychologists' couches would tell us, if they could speak, we pay a heavy price for failing to listen, splitting ourselves in the process.
This book has interesting things to say about this process of learning. In Chinese terms, its yin and yang, and we might view the dark side of ourselves as the fruitful bathos or dark ground required for shoots of light to grow. Most of Stephen's observations concern what might be called the inevitable dialogue between the dark and light side of ourselves, in which the dark side doesn't preponderate, but merely hinders. For Stepnhen, it is all tied up with clinging, blocking the flow, damming the stream of life.
However, as with so much literature of this type, which falls into the 'self-help' category, questions concerning 'evil' on a macrocosmic scale are hardly addressed at all. One might ask what bearing these observations have on something like the rise of Nazism and the appearance of death camps? Such issues touch on the problem of collective unconsciousness and the collective shadow. Seen from that perspective, a philosophy of 'letting go' and 'letting things happen' would seem to be double-edged. In one sense, the dangers of the modern world stem from a lack of reflection or reflective awareness, rather than an excess of it. Some things need to be 'resisted' - either in our immediate, personal lives, as well as our collective lives at large. Still, at least, if we are in touch with the 'devil' or 'mara' in ourselves, we are that less likely to locate the devil elsewhere, or in someone else.
Always enlightening February 7, 2005
21 out of 23 found this review helpful
I ordered this book because I have been a student of both Eastern and Western views on Good and Evil, both in practical and philosophical terms. I gave the book four stars because I don't think Batchelor goes deeply enough into "the Devil" in the title. The Problem of Evil is an idea that plagues every society, and there is not much written about it from a Buddhist perspective.
Don't get me wrong; he has a helpful (especially because non-theistic) hypothesis. He has made a contribution to the thinking on this vast topic.
The best thing about this book is the prose. As always, Batchelor writes poetically, almost lyrically. It is a pleasure to read. Some might find it a book to be savored, and lingered over, and some might find, as I did, that it can be read and enjoyed in brief snatches.
Batchelor does a wonderful job of putting Buddhist thought into understandable language, and of making the ancient texts relevant to modern experience. For practitioners of Buddhism, like myself, this book can enhance one's understanding of any number of elements of Buddhism (e.g., meditation on the breath, having a body, human relationships, the idea of engaged Buddhism). I would imagine that for non-Buddhists, besides being exposed to a clear exposition on basic Buddhist philosophy, this book demonstrates how Western and Buddhist thinkers concur on the problem of evil in important ways.
Truly insightful and practical October 3, 2004
63 out of 70 found this review helpful
I feel like Batchelor is someone who truly wants to face existence as it is and find an authentic respond to it. Consequently, his insights were really heart-felt. He is like the stubborn kid on the block who refuses to go home until he has resolved the question about the stars.
Living With the Devil has helped me to create a different perspective on mortality. For example, as he had suggested that our existence is "contingent rather than necessary."
To illustrate this point the best, I will give an example of how it helps me in my specific situation. I am an Asian immigrant in America. And just few weeks ago, I was walking one early morning to class on a college campus and saw a white football player type of person walking toward me. That morning I was in a fairly good mood and was in fact planning on saying hi to that person, despite the fact that few hate crime incidents had just happened in the last couple of weeks on campus and I was fairly frustrated because not a lot of people including the faculties, which were essential, were willing to participate and show support in the discussion about the hate crimes after they had happened. Anyway, as we are about to approach each other, he suddenly cut in front of me, so that I had to actually force my self to stop so that I don't bump into him. I looked at him in surprise and he gave me a nasty stare. PLEASE NOTE: this is not a racial comment, it can happen to anyone, for example, maybe in the case of a Chinese soldier to a Tibetan in Tibet.
I had thought about this incident and couldn't really think of anything. I am like 6-3, so if I have to fight I can, but I am also a psychology major and am interested in public service, so there is a conflict in me. What is more important is that I feel like I might look at white people more negatively afterwards and I really don't want to do that.
Then I read Batchelor's book. My solution is to look at the whole incident as a contingent event. I reason,
1st If I were to brush my teeth that morning or ate my breakfast, I would not have encountered him.
2nd what happens is not personal, it can be anyone else of my race, so it is really about him.
3rd Next, I just accept him as he is. Just like I accept a tiger; a tiger for some reason by nature or nurture functions differently, though it is potentially threatening to me, but I don't hate a tiger, in fact I think tigers are exotic and beautiful.
Instead of projecting my self-centered compulsive reactivity (that has helped our ancestors to survive though-out natural selection) onto the contingent world, (which freely plays itself), I face myself.
I face my own biological and psychological self-preserving compulsions. One's life is "contingent rather than necessary", there is no special reason why so and so bla bla bla, our urge to think of life as a story that revolves around us is a trick that the "devil" plays on us. We live in that fixation or routine way of thinking as if they are necessary because somehow they are special.
Fixations become a restraining routine or "devil's circle" that just repeats itself again and again. The problem and challenge that Batchelor points out is radical and unconventional in many ways. As you will see if you read the chapter "Fear and Trembling" about a nun who is fearless in the face of the possibility that she might be molested and her respond to the "devil" or her own biological and psychological fear is even more magnificent as the nun Uppalavanna says,
"Though a hundred thousand rogues just like you might come here, I stir not a hair, I feel no terror; even alone, Mara, I don't fear you. I am freed from all bondage, therefore I don't fear you, friend."
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