Friday, February 28, 2025

Mad at Trump, Anger-Eating Demon


Killing me softly: How deadhead Pres killed funny Tom Tomorrow (thismodernworld.com)



How to feed a demon
If you don't shut up right now, I'm going to pop your aura with this finger, Vlad. - Oh, really?
My alter ego is the same as my facade -- all fronting, all bluster, all pettiness and, well, ego.

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I used to be a good Democrat like Ron Reagan
Some demons love anger. They feed on it. Others savor depression, malice, suicide, all kinds of ick. Imagine microbes in the dark underground, taking poop we discard and recycling it into something green and fragrant shining in the sun. This world would not be possible with our friends in the Fungi Kingdom. There are bacteria and all sorts of worms, insects, and creepy crawlies. We depict this lightly in haunted houses full of cobwebs, dark and cold. But it's right under our feet all the time. These hardworking germies love to eat, reduce, and recycle. A nightcrawler worm farm is the best thing for a garden.


They think we're opposites, the stupid SOBs
All we regard as bad, yin, is made good, yang, and the cycle continues. We regard things as "good" or "bad," but those are our labels, our biases, our judgments. In fact, things are such (thanks to suchness), just so, as it is, perfect in their relationship to each other. Nothing is wrong. It just seems like there is. So a sickly demon (imagine a pasty, balding, flatulent fatarse whose face is rotting right on the bone) sits on a throne, and the light beings (devas, angels) are angered at it. And it begins to glow. It likes it, all the attention. Even negative attention is attention. "There's no such thing as negative press," says my PR agent. "All press is good press" because it keeps a face in the news, in the headlines, on the lips of everyone until we don't know what's really going on, but our attention has been captured.

The Dhamma ("Law" or "Norm") may be expressed in the Buddha's words recorded in the Dhammapada (Verse 5):

"Not by hating hatred ceases
In this world of tooth and claw
Love alone from hate releases —
This is an Eternal Law"
(originally translated by Francis Story)

The Anger-Eating Demon retold from an ancient Buddhist story
Ven. Nyanaponika Thera, edited by Wisdom Quarterly
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The Hatman's hot companion laughs to the bank
Once there lived a demon who had a peculiar diet: He fed on the anger of others. And as his feeding ground was the human world, there was no lack of food for him.

He found it quite easy to provoke a family quarrel, or national and racial hatred. Even to stir up a big war was not very difficult for him.

And whenever he succeeded in causing a war, he could properly gorge himself without much further effort because once a war starts, hate multiplies by its own momentum and affects even normally friendly and peaceful people.

Don't you try to dictate what we're going to feel!
The demon's food supply became so rich that he sometimes had to restrain himself from over-eating, being content with nibbling just a small piece of gnawing resentment from his wife found close by, if the fast food in the fridge was all gone.

But as often happens with successful people, he became overbearing. And one day when feeling bored he thought, "Shouldn't I try it with the gods (devas, lit. the shining ones in space)?"

Afte little reflection he chose the Heaven of the Thirty-Three, ruled by Sakka, King of the Devas. He knew that only a few of these devas had entirely eliminated the fetters of ill-will and aversion [as is brought about by Buddhist practice taught by the Buddha to Sakka and other devas who visited him in a certain watch of the night], though they are generally far above petty and selfish human quarrels.


So by his power he transferred himself to that heavenly realm and was fortunate to arrive at a time when the divine king Sakka was absent: There was no one in the large audience hall.

So without much ado the demon seated himself on Sakka's empty throne, waiting quietly for things to happen, which he hoped would bring him a good meal of surly emotions.

Soon some devas came into the hall. At first they could hardly believe their eyes when they saw that ugly demon sitting on the splendid throne, squat and grinning, a ginger with his red toupee combover. Recovering from their shock, they started to shout and lament:

"Oh, you ugly POS demon! How can you dare to sit on the throne of our reigning monarch? What utter dastardliness! What a crime! You should be cast headlong into hell straight into a cauldron of boiling oil! You should be drawn and quartered alive! Begone! Begone!"


But while the devas grew more and more angry, the demon remained pleased because from moment to moment he grew in size, in strength, and in power.

The anger he absorbed into his system started to ooze from his body as a smoky mist glowing red, like his rosacea, psoriasis, alopecia, and vitiligo. His evil aura kept the devas at a distance as their radiance dimmed.

Suddenly a bright glow appeared at the other end of the hall. It grew into a dazzling light from which Sakka, King of the Devas, emerged. He who had firmly entered the undeflectable stream that leads towards nirvana (a sotapanna), was unshaken by what he saw.


The smokescreen created by the devas' anger parted when Sakka slowly and politely approached the usurper of his throne and said:

"Welcome, Friend! Please, stay seated. I can grab another chair. May I offer you a drink out of hospitality? Our Amrita [the "nectar of the gods," brew of immortality, the Ambrosia of the ancient Greeks] is good. Or do you prefer a stronger brew, Vedic Soma? Some Sura?"

While Sakka spoke such friendly words, the demon rapidly shrank to a tiny size and finally disappeared, trailing behind a whiff of malodorous smoke that likewise soon dissolved.
  • —Based on a sutra from the Samyutta Nikaya, a collection known as the Sakka Samyutta, Number 22.

The gist of this story dates back to the discourses of the Buddha. But even now, over 2,600 years later, our world looks as if large hordes of Anger-Eating Demons are haunting it, kept well-nourished by millions slaving for them all over the face of the earth.

Fires of hate and wide-traveling waves of violence threaten to engulf humankind. The grassroots of society are poisoned by conflict and discord, manifesting as angry thoughts and words and in violent deeds.


Shall we buy and burn MAGA hats in protest?
Is it not time to end our self-destructive slavery and our impulses of hate and aggression, which only serve the demonic forces?

This story explains how demons of hate can be exorcised by the power of gentleness and love. If this power of love can be tested and proven, at a grassroots level in our widely spread net of personal relationships, society at large, the world at large, will not benefit.
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