Evil Spirits and the Medicine of Dharma Practice

Two predominate themes emerge in the Dharma view of ‘demons’. One, from the level of absolute truth, they do not exist. Like everything else, they have no self-nature. They are in fact empty. Two, from the level of relative truth, they are conditioned existence. One should protect oneself form their negative influence.

The lamas explain that ghosts arise from the conceptualization; they come from the duality of mind. Whether they are real or not real is up to the practice of the perceiver. If one has the ‘pure vision’ of the Vajrayana wisdom mind, then they are experienced as pure phenomena, just as samsara and nirvana are inseparably experienced as the tri-kaya.

Approaching ghosts and spirits from the level of absolute truth, we realize the nature of emptiness, theirs and ours, so nothing can harm us. The wisdom of the present awareness of emptiness is the Dharmakaya; nothing can affect it. By realizing shunyata, all sickness and negativity is subdued or dissolved. Those distinctions simply do not exist.

In this wisdom there is no hope or fear. Therefore even if a ‘demon’ appeared to rush towards one with a flaming dagger, the person whose mind is identified with emptiness is immovable, adamantine, and no demon can harm him. The demon disappears. All is primordially pure nature of mind. Then even protective measures against negative spirits (exorcisms and the like) are subsumed in the realization of emptiness. As said in a tantra:

When the nature of Mind has been realized

As making offerings and performing exorcism

And all other sorts of work and duties

(Then you understand that) everything is encompassed by it.

So, we can defeat all demons and ghosts with the supreme medicine – the realization of radiant emptiness, absolute truth, from which compassion spontaneously arises.

On a relative level, these negative forces and demons are understood to have an actual existence, but the absolute truth, that all phenomena has no self nature and is generated by the ego-habits of countless lives, is kept in mind. (pp. 161-2, Clifford, 1984).

Source:

Tibetan Buddhist & Medicine Psychiatry: The Diamond Healing. By Terry Clifford (1984)al Banarsidass Publishers Pte Ltd, Delhi.