New Look On Demons In Religions (新解宗教中的魔)

According to Buddhism, there are four types of demons: 

1. Skandha-mara (五蕴魔): troubles due to five senses.
2. Klesa-mara (烦恼魔):  troubles due to greed, hatred, ignorance etc.
3. Mrtya-mara (死魔): deaths.
4. Deva-putra-mara (天子魔): almost equivalent to the Devil. 

It is said also that except for those profound dharma practitioners, ordinary folks like you and me will not have a chance to come across the deva-putra-mara so to speak.

The first three 'mara' or demons are actually phenomena caused by the imbalance and disharmony of our mortal mind due to the impact of the external environments. In another words, the those demons are actually man-made' and they are the products of our troubling mind.

It is commonly believed in most of the mundane world religions that 'trial by demons' (魔考) is a must if a person wished to progress in his or her spiritual path or to be allowed into the heaven. In fact, if we take away those antagonistic evil elements; most of our major and minor religions cannot stand or attract followers to donate and repent for their sins.

Hence, demons to me, is a cleaver imaginary items devised by religious folks to deceive and control those ignorant followers so that people would fear of making sins and willing to bow to religious leaders' worldly greed and intentions.

Demonic or gods possessions are in fact a form of  'sexual repression' in modern terms. Or the phenomena is caused by the morbid psychology of afraid of losing something of great importance, or wanting something but unable to. When this condition occurs, hallucinations will result. In another words, the person will start to see things and believes that he or she is possessed by 'demons' or 'gods'.

To me, the so called 'demons' in our modern time, are actually various state of our consciences and the guilt of breaking ethics. In another words, we are trialed by our own mind. This mind trials became most noticeable during our meditations, when we feel lonely or in the dead of the night when the environment is quiet.

We are in fact consistently being trialed by our own consciences against our daily behaviors. It is these types of introspection of our minds that consistently throw our inner mind to off balance. To the ordinary folks, his type of inner mind struggles could haunt them for the entire life until they have mental breakdowns.

Many religions folks or those without knowledge in psychology like to lump mental depressions into demonic possessions and said that the sufferers are sinned and they must repent or donate money to the temple for merit creations. Actually speaking, this so-called 'demonic possession' could also occur in not so religious occasions too.

For example: when a person is too engross in doing a mundane interests like plants collections or gambling, his or her behavior behaves as if being possessed by demons. A plant collector I know has his house stuffed with various plants until no place to walk. A gambler would burn all his money in gambling as if mad.

So, my friend, isn't it a wonderful world out there to explore? Why bugged down by the demons created by religious people and throw away all your money and even family for the perceive sacred cause? Think about it.