Everything is soul, nothing has substance. Images are gods, multiple aspects of the divine. Thoughts, ideas, feelings find their essence in images. These images the ancient Greeks called eidola. The word eidolon in Greek used to indicate images or simulacra of gods and goddesses. Ideas, thoughts and feelings were thus considered images of gods. 

In Buddhism gods are called deva. Devas, like the gods of the ancients or animistic spirits, the devas cannot be associated to the idea of a divinity that lives in an abstract, distant heaven. They are ideas, images, visions, and they can manifest themselves as false idols, that is as ideas distorted by the mind, by fear and the urge to control. On the other hand, they can be free, authentic ideas, multiple forms of the one creative love.  

In one of his sermons the Buddha said, “dhamma (the right path) is love in the beginning, love in middle and love in the end.” (Sayings of the Buddha, Dantabhūmi-sutta – Majjhima-Nikāya No. 125).

God is an image of man, but man is made in the image and the likeliness of god. 

When we reach the condition of total union that lies at the heart of meditation, known by the Sanskrit term samādhi, we are put face to face with love. The human and the divine, the visible and the invisible generate each other in a process of complete fusion, of absolute love. It’s a three-way relationship: the human, the divine, and their creation – the world soul, the holy spirit. In this relationship neither man, nor god, nor their creation exist separately; only their union exits, their mutual giving, which is love. Only love truly exists. 

Human and divine are distinct but not separate. They are two in one. They are one in that they are constantly passing one into the other, disappearing in each other, but they are also two, for they remain distinct to enjoy the pleasure of their union. And it could not be any different, for, if god is love, god is giving; to love means to give oneself in order to create above oneself.  This is also represented by the images of Buddha Vajradhara depicted in erotic union with his companion , typical of esoteric Buddhism. 

In Buddhism devas are part of the samsara wheel, they are not outside of it. One must help them break free if one wants to break free themselves. Freedom is never a personal issue. Helping ideas break free from the mental perspective is one of the tasks of whoever meditates. This is achieved by a number of way, like for example by offering the merits of one’s good actions to the devas so that they may proceed on the path to final liberation. A person is either freed together with their devas and their asuras, their gods and demons, or isn’t freed at all. 

Gods, ideas, are not a product of the mind, and meditation is the process by which ideas are “healed” by being freed from the mental cage that distorts them. Distorting ideas, the mind creates false gods, false interpretations and event false events, because interpreting is creating. 

In order to heal ideas through meditation we turn to the powers of love and compassion.  Amongst them one is particularly effective: compassion. Through compassion it is possible to bless one’s enemies and even one’s own disruptive ideas. Compassion is able to work through our ideas, thoughts and feelings as well as through the images of our enemies, to the point of transforming them. 

During the time I’ve spent in a forest hermitage in Habarana, Sri Lanka, I was really struggling to wake up every day at 4am to begin meditation. One day, my meditation teacher Reverend Gotatuwe Sumanaloka Thero, told me I should bless the deva of laziness that was accompanying me. I started doing that reciting the following mantra in Pali: 

“Sabbe satta sukhi hontu”, which is generally translated as  “may all creatures be happy”.  After a couple of days I had lost my laziness.

Translating this event into common parlance, I should say that I’ve “overcome my own laziness”, but that’s not the way it was. I did not “overcome” laziness, I allowed it to break free, and so I quelled it. 

The art of quelling devas and asuras through meditation, by the repetition of mantra and pujas (ritual ceremonies), is a fantastic way to make progress on the path to full awareness. 

If there is something, inside or outside of you, that you wish to change, rather than fighting it try blessing it with the mantra “Sabbe satta sukhi hontu” – “May all creature be happy!” It could be the beginning of great change, not only of those aspects you want to transform, but even of the way you see and perceive existence.