Abstract:

We, as humans, are not only conscious beings like other animals but also self-conscious and self-transcendent. We therefore think about ourselves, our immediate and far environment, and even our entire world and different condi-tions of it. Sometimes we can also contemplate and reflect on such questions as, (a) why there is evil and suffering, and why natural disasters happen in the world and cause so many innocent people to die or to suffer; or (b) why right-eous people suffer while evil ones live in a better and more comfortable condi-tion. These kinds of questions become much crucial and more existential espe-cially for all theists in general and Muslims in particular. As the Muslims, we believe in an omnipotent, omniscient and infinitely good God who is the Creator and Sustainer of everything in the world. In such a situation, most of us are faced to reconcile the idea of God with the existence of various evils. But it would be possible for us to account for the problem of evil either by denying the omnipotence, omniscience and goodness of God, or by accepting all suffering as a result of our intentional actions, or by accepting a new evil god/gods rather than a good One, namely Ahriman, demons, ghosts, asuras etc. in different reli-gious systems. In this article, we examine how Hinduism and Buddhism answer for above ques-tions, and struggle against the phenomenon of human suffering. We discuss that there is direct relation with the idea of God and the answer for human suffering. For example, in Vedic period of Hinduism, people believe in so many gods and goddesses, who are good in nature, at the same time they attribute all kinds of evil in world to demons, or asuras who have evil in natures, and very much simi-lar to gods. As we came to Upanisadic period, there is no anthropomorphic and theriomorphic concept of God on the one hand, avidya, ignorance, is accepted the cause of evil and human sufferings on the other. It is also noticeable that similar development takes place in the history of Buddhism as far as the concep-tion of Mara is concerned.

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