Mara- Buddhist GodDeity"Lord of Death"

The Night of Enlightenment

Mara's name comes from the Sanskrit root for death. His epithet Namuci means "he who does not let go."

As Siddhartha Gautama sat beneath the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya, Mara sensed that one of his subjects was about to escape his realm forever. He marshaled his forces for an all-out assault. Ashvaghosha's Buddhacarita describes what came: thousands of demons with the heads of animals, wielding weapons of every kind, hurling mountains and shooting arrows, bringing fire and flood and darkness. The sky blackened. The ground trembled. Yet the Bodhisattva remained unmoved in meditation, and every missile transformed into flower offerings as it approached him. The Lalitavistara Sutra adds that even the gods who had gathered to witness the Bodhisattva's victory fled in terror before Mara's onslaught. Only the Bodhisattva held firm.

The Three Daughters

When terror failed, Mara sent his three daughters: Tanha (Craving), Arati (Aversion), and Raga (Passion). They danced before the Bodhisattva, transforming themselves into women of every age, offering every sensual pleasure if he would abandon his quest. Their charms had no more effect than arrows shot at a stone. In the Samyutta Nikaya, the daughters approach the Buddha again after his enlightenment. He dismisses them with a teaching on the impermanence of beauty, and they return to their father defeated.

The Earth as Witness

In a final challenge, Mara demanded to know by what right the Bodhisattva claimed the seat of enlightenment. "Who will bear witness for you?" he mocked, his own demon armies roaring support. The Bodhisattva reached down and touched the earth with his right hand. The earth goddess rose and testified to his countless acts of generosity and renunciation through innumerable lifetimes. She wrung water from her hair, the accumulated offerings of his past lives, and the flood swept away Mara's armies. Mara's elephant Girimekhala knelt. The lord of death fled.

Mara's Ten Armies

The Padhana Sutta preserves an earlier confrontation, before the night at Bodh Gaya, in which Mara names his own weapons with unsettling precision. He identifies ten armies: sensual desire leads the vanguard; self-praise coupled with contempt for others brings up the rear. Between them march discontent, craving, sloth, fear, and doubt. Not demons with animal heads, but the ordinary obstacles of a restless mind and a hungry body.

Mara's Persistence

With dawn, Siddhartha attained enlightenment and became the Buddha. Mara had lost, yet not entirely. Throughout the Buddha's forty-five-year teaching career, Mara appears repeatedly in the early suttas. He urges the Buddha to enter parinirvana immediately without teaching. He tells monks to abandon their practice. He appears as various beings to spread doubt. Each time, the Buddha recognizes him: "I know you, Mara. Away with you!" The recognition is the defeat. In the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, Mara finally persuades the Buddha to set a date for his passing. After forty-five years of failure, persistence achieved its one aim.

Mara and the Nuns

The Bhikkhuni Samyutta preserves a series of encounters between Mara and the Buddha's female disciples. He tells Soma that women's "two-fingered wisdom" is insufficient for liberation. Soma replies that gender is irrelevant when the mind is concentrated and insight clear. He tries to terrify Uppalavanna by appearing in darkness beneath a tree. She tells him she has no fear, not even of a hundred thousand Maras. In every encounter, the nuns see through his disguises and defeat him.

The Wheel of Life

The Vimalakīrti Sutra tells how Mara, disguised as the god Śakra, brought twelve thousand celestial maidens to a bodhisattva's dwelling as a gift. Vimalakīrti saw through the disguise, accepted the goddesses, and taught them to aspire to enlightenment. Mara's weapons became instruments of liberation. Some Mahayana sutras predict that Mara himself will one day attain buddhahood. The demon who hurled mountains at the Bodhisattva will eventually sit beneath his own tree and touch the earth.

In Tibetan Buddhist iconography, Mara grips the Bhavachakra, the Wheel of Life, in his claws and jaws. This image, painted at the entrance of nearly every Tibetan temple, shows the six realms of existence spinning through the twelve links of dependent origination. At the hub, a pig, a snake, and a rooster chase each other in an endless circle: ignorance, hatred, greed. The Buddha stands outside the wheel, pointing toward the moon of nirvana.