The following is an excerpt from Patrul Rinpoche’s “The Words of My Perfect Teacher”
Now surely, if anyone takes harmful spirits as something to be killed or beaten, it must be because his mind is under the power of attachment and hatred and knows nothing of great impartial compassion. When you think about it carefully, those malignant spirits are far more in need of compassion than any benefactors. They have become harmful spirits because of their evil karma. Reborn as pretas, with horrible bodies, their pain and fear is unimaginable. They experience nothing but endless hunger, thirst, and exhaustion. They perceive everything as threatening. And their minds are full of hate and aggression, many go to hell as soon as they die. Who could deserve more pity? The patrons may be sick and suffering, but that will help them exhaust their evil karma, not to create more. Those evil spirits, on the other hand, are harming others with their evil intentions, and will be hurled by those harmful actions to the depths of the lower realms.
If the Conqueror, skilled in means and full of compassion, taught the art of exorcising or intimidating these harmful spirits with violent methods, it was out of compassion for them, like a mother spanking a child who will not obey her. He also permitted the ritual of liberation to be practiced by those who have the power to interrupt the flow of evil deeds of beings who only do harm, and to transfer their consciousness to a pure realm. But as for pandering to benefactors, monks and others that we consider to be on our own side, and rejecting demons and wrongdoers as hateful enemies — protecting the one and attacking the other out of attachment and hatred — where are such attitudes mentioned in teachings of the Conqueror? As long as we are driven by such feelings of attachment and hatred, it would be futile to try to expel or attack any harmful spirits. Their bodies are only mental and they will not obey us. They will only do us harm in return. Indeed, even if our feelings for such gods and spirits are very positive — not to speak of desire and hate — we will never subdue them as long as we believe that they really exist.
When Jetsun Mila was living in Garuda Fortress Cave in the Chong valley, the king of obstacle-makers, Vinayaka, produced a supernatural illusion. In his cave, Jetsun Mila found five astaras with eyes as big as saucers. He prayed to his teacher and to his yidam, but the demons did not go away. He meditated on the visualization of his deity and recited wrathful mantras, but still they would not go.
Finally, he thought, “Marpa of Lhodrak showed me that everything in the universe is mind, and that the nature of mind is empty and radiant. To believe in these demons and obstacle-makers as something external and to want them to go away has no meaning.”
Feeling powerful confidence in the view that knows spirits and demons to be simply one’s own perceptions, he strode back into his cave. Terrified and rollingtheir eyes, the astaras disappeared.
This is also what the Ogress of the Rock meant, when she sang to him:
This demon of your own tendencies arises from your mind;
If you don’t recognize the nature of your mind,
I’m not going to leave just because you tell me to go.
If you don’t realize that your mind is void,
There are many more demons besides myself!
But if you recognize the nature of your own mind,
Adverse circumstances will serve only to sustain you
And even I, Ogress of the Rock, will be at your bidding.
