THE PROBLEM OF evil is a central one in every system of philosophy or religion, a problem that is usually explained away instead of itself being explained; and the difficulty of reconciling the conception of a God who is all good with the existence of evil remains. Monists of the West, in order to be consistent with their philosophy of absolutism, tend to deny the reality of evil; for, they declare, what we call evil is evil only because we do not view our lives sub specie aeternitatis (means ‘under the aspect of eternity’). What appears to be evil is in reality good when viewed in this manner.

And yet we must ask, can evil really be changed into good merely by viewing it in a special manner? Can pain be labeled pleasure provided we view it absolutely? It is true that pain maybe borne gracefully if we fix our gaze upon the ultimate goodness of God, but pain is a positive experience of suffering, at least during the duration of the experience. How then can a philosophy be at one with itself simply by denying evil or even more simply by affirming that it can be transformed into good when it is viewed "under the aspect of eternity"? The question remains unanswered in Western attempts to dodge this gravest of all ethical problems.

Vedanta meets the issue in a different way. In the first place, it asserts that, when viewed from the point of view of the Absolute, there is neither good nor evil, neither pleasure nor pain. Then evil no longer exists not because the magical power of the Absolute changes evil into good, but because both good and evil have ceased to exist. So long, however, as we are experiencing pleasure and pain, so long do both good and evil exist as empirically real. The experience of evil is indeed as much a positive fact as the experience of good. Vedanta thus recognizes both good and evil, and pleasure and pain, as positive facts of experience in our empirical lives, they being in effect the play of maya, neither real nor unreal. They cannot be said to be real, for we no longer experience them when we touch absolute experience; and they cannot be said to be actually unreal, for they are experienced in our empirical lives.

Thus, if we accept finite experiences as but the play of maya, the perfection of the Absolute is in no way tarnished. The experiences of pleasure and of pain within maya are in fact due to the good and evil deeds of an individual's past; they are the direct result of karma operating in an individual's life. Shankara compares God to the giver of rain. As rain falls to the ground, various plants ripen and grow and differ from one another, not because the rain is partial but because the seeds are different, Ishvara (God) in like manner is the dispenser of the Law, and individuals experience pleasure and pain according to the seeds of merit and demerit they have sown in themselves from a beginningless past.

So, again, the all-goodness of God is not contradicted by our own individual experiences of suffering and evil. Good and evil, that is to say, as they exist as maya, are relative—in the sense that the one without the other is meaningless. Shankara, therefore, distinguishes maya as being of two kinds—avidya (evil) and vidya (good). Avidya is that which causes us to move away from the real Self, or Brahman, drawing a veil before our sight of Truth; vidya is that which enables us to move towards Brahman by removing the veil of ignorance. As we receive illumination and come to know the Self, we transcend both vidya and avidya and cease to submit to the dominion or maya.

Source: Article by Swami Prabhavananda, Living Wisdom, Published by Sri Ramakrishna Math, Chennai, 1995.