Mara
In Buddhism, Mara is the demon who assaulted Gautama Buddha beneath the bodhi tree, using violence, sensory pleasure and mockery in an attempt to prevent the Buddha's enlightenment. In Buddhist cosmology, Mara personifies unskillfulness, the "death" of the spiritual life. He is a tempter, distracting humans from practising the spiritual life by making the mundane alluring or the negative seem positive.
Legends About Mara
Mara is best known for his role in opposing Buddha prior to and during his enlightenment. Many Buddhist works recount this tale, and it is told in great detail in the Buddhacarita, written about 100 C.E. by the Buddhist writer Ashvagosha. As Buddha sits beneath the bodhi tree Mara is alerted to this impending enlightenment. As lord of death and sensual pleasure, Mara recognizes Buddha's success will mean an end to his reign. Though futile, he decides to make attempts at disturbing Buddha and preventing his enlightenment.
Mara attempts to tempt Buddha, both with promises of glory and pleasure, and then begins to warn of consequences for breaking away from the prince's religious and secular duties. Buddha easily rejects these, knowing they are meaningless. Mara uses force against Buddha, appearing as a hideous demon and sending an army of likewise revolting and terrible creatures, bent on the bodily destruction of Buddha. They launch a volley of arrows at Buddha, but as these projectiles approach they are transformed into flowers and fall harmlessly to the ground. Buddha invokes the earth goddess to wash away the demons in a flood - the earth goddess obliges. The daughters of Mara try to coerce and seduce Buddha, but he recognizes them as they are, and is not swayed from his goald. Finally Mara mocks Buddha, and tells him is work is for nothing, as there is no one there to recognize his acheivement. Buddha responds that the earth will be his witness, and after touching the ground the earth trembles in agreement. Thus Mara admits defeat for the moment; however, he is determined to carry on harrassing the Buddha and his followers.
Legend continues to portray Mara as an enemy of the dharma. During various attempts by Buddha to teach key Buddhist ideas to groups of listeners Mara intervenes to halt the enlightenment of further seekers. For instance, when Buddha preached in a busy market place, Mara manifested himself as a bull and began to destroy the wares of merchants, causing those amassed to hear the dharma to turn their attention to restraining the beast. Not only was Buddha impeded by Mara - in the Asokavandana (3rd century B.C.E.) the monk Upagupta is said to have his potential converts led astray by the spontaneous appearance of money and valuables and celestial music. Mara also beguiled Ananda, Buddha's disciple, tricking the student into accepting his teacher's decision to leave the world though having the power to stay.
Some early Buddhists, however, rather than seeing Mara as a demonic, virtually all-powerful Lord of Evil, regarded him as more of a nuisance. Many episodes concerning his interactions with the Buddha and his disciples have a decidedly humorous air to them.
Names and Etymology
In traditional Buddhism four senses of the word "mara" are given. Firstly, there is klesa-mara, or Mara as the embodiment of all unskilful emotions. Secondly, mrtyu-mara, or Mara as death, in the sense of the ceaseless round of birth and death. Thirdly, skandha-mara, or Mara as metaphor for the entirety of conditioned existence. Lastly, devaputra-mara, or Mara the son of a god, that is, Mara as an objectively existent being rather than as a metaphor. This last connotation of mara is strikingly similar to the hindu concept of Maya (Illusive Power of God), which may suggest that the two words Maya and Mara are perhaps directly related.
The Development of Mara
In his work Buddhism and the Mythology of Evil T. O. Ling suggests that Mara is the Buddhist extension of an existing framework for demonology in Hinduism. He makes the case that Mara qualifies as a yakkha, a Pali word for nature spirit (Sanskrit yaksha). Ling notes that both yakkhas and Mara attack their victims in the night, seek to bring distraction to spiritual people, can shape-shift into all manners of terrifying creatures, seek to preserve the existing ritual framework (at least those in which they are beneficiaries), and can spiritually possess mortals (Ling, p. 45). These similarities indicate that Mara is not entirely a Buddhist invention, but evolved from popular yakkha mythology.
Though these similarities do exist, scholars (Ling included) note that Mara does possess a great deal of attributes that do define him as distinctly Buddhist.
Psychological Interpretation
Early Buddhism acknowledged both a literal and "psychological" interpretation of Mara. Whichever way we ourselves understand the term, Mara has power only to the extent that we give it to him.
"Buddha defying Mara" is a common pose of Buddha sculptures. The Buddha is shown with his right hand on his right knee and his left hand in his lap, palm facing upwards.
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