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 and Buddha's Enlightenment
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 goal. 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.
Later Mara Legends
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. This same source indicates that Upagupta was eventually able to convert Mara to Buddhism; however, this hagiography is considered apochraphal by many Buddhists. 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. It is notable that though the recognition and depiction of Mara persisted in the spread of Buddhism to China, Tibet, Japan, and other regions, little was added to the mythos surrounding him or his role in Buddhism. Far Eastern understandings and representations of Mara are fundamentally congruent with their Eastern predecessors.
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.
Mara is also known as Namuci ("not-loosing"), a demon described in the Hindu Vedic literature as causing drought. Describing Mara thus is a literary allusion used by Buddhists to indicate his power and malevolence. Mara is also called Kanha ("the dark one"), associating his power with darkness, also a metaphor for confusion. Other epithets of Mara are Maccu ("death"), Antaka ("the end), and Papima ("evil one"), all of which further attest to his notoriety in Buddhist thought and literature.
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. Belief in yakkhas did indeed cross over into Buddhism, and though beliefs about them may have been adapted in the development of Mara, Buddhists make the distinction between Mara and yakkhas. As well, yakkhas only serve as small role in Hindu mythology, while Mara is set up as a diametric opposer of Buddha - that is, Mara is not unlike Satan as found in Christianity. Hinduism has no such figure, and yakkhas are certainly not identified this way. As well, Mara's motivation is dressed in Buddhist thought - to distract those who are intent on learning the Buddhist dharma.
Mara has also been associated with the Hindu deity Kama, a god linked with sensuous desire and love. This identification does not appear in the earliest Buddhist writings, but appears to be a later development. The implication is clear: Kama's domain is essentially the same as Mara's, seen through the lens of Buddhist thought. According to the second Noble Truth of Buddhism desire is cause of suffering; in other words, the realm of Kama leads to the realm of Mara (ie., death). This understanding of the Kama/Mara relationship is not found in Hinduism. In Buddhist cosmology Mara is sometimes referred to as the ruler Kamadhatu, the "sense and desire realm".
Mara in Art
"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. In works depicting Mara he is most often presented as a hideous demon; at other times he is depicted as an enormous elephant, cobra or bull. When shown in a human-like form he is usually shown riding an elephant with additional tusks. Other popular scenes shown in art work include the attacks of Mara's demon army or Mara's daughters tempting Buddha, or the flood that washes away those under Mara's command.
Psychological Interpretation
Early Buddhists, as well as later Buddhists, 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. Mara can be external obstacles or internal obstacles, or both. In either case, he must be overcome to proceed further into the Buddhist understanding of reality.
The early stories of Mara likely served several purposes. They may have been mythology distributed in order to satisfy a laity in a newly formed group without a great deal of original mythology. Some stories suggest that they are a veiled critique of Hindu understandings of spirituality. The primary purpose of Mara stories, however, are didactic in nature. They are meant to inform new practitioners and remind older converts of the dangers that they face when they tread the Buddhist path. In this sense Mara is used as a tool to teach the Buddhist about obstacles they will be confronted with as a bhikku - and that these obstacles are found within one's own mind.
Mara's role as a representation for internal vices is clearly seen in his attack on the Buddha as described in the Buddhacarita. Mara's army represents violence and rage - Buddha overcomes them with peace and gentleness. The daughters of Mara are representations of lust and desire, which Buddha overcomes by recognizing their true nature and emptiness. Mara's own attack on Buddha's pride represents the folly of pride, which Buddha defeats with his denial of the self.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Corless, Roger J. "The Vision of Buddhism: The Space Under the Tree". Paragon House, 1989. ISBN 1557782008
- Falk, Nancy E. Auer. "Mara" in The Encyclopedia of Religion, pg. 188, edited by Mircea Eliade. MacMillan, 1987. ISBN 0028971353
- Hamilton, Sue. "Early Buddhism: A New Approach: The I of the Beholder". Curzon, 2000. ISBN 0700713573
- Ling, T.O. "Buddhism and the Mythology of Evil". Allen and Unwin, 1962.
- Lopez, Donald S., Jr., ed. "Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism". University of Chicago Press, 2005. ISBN 0226493156
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