Mara is the bad boy of Buddhism; its devil and tempter, if you like. Essentially, we live in the land of Mara—and certainly we inhabit the body of Mara since Mara is synonymous with the Five Aggregates (S. iii. 195).
The root word of Mara essentially refers to death and destruction (√MRI). Mara causes us lose sight of the deathless (i.e., nirvana). Some of his tools by which he does this are the kleshas (P., kilesa) . Kleshas are primarily disturbances of the mind such as greed, hatred (pratigha), ignorance (avidya), arrogance (mâna), doubt, and false views. By these, and other means, Mara holds sway over the world.
Our Buddhist bad boy is also the big honcho of the world of sensual pleasures; who is also aware of any attempt to curb sensual pleasures. We could say, it is a direct challenge to Mara’s authority to crash his sensual parties! From Mara’s point of view, there is nothing better than getting wound up in sensual delight throwing all caution to the wind. Mara especially loves us when we are chained to sensual pleasures. He also loves us when we are unrestrained, in the example of eating a chocolate fudge cake or gambling, or following the course of Tiger Woods becoming a sex addict.
If there were such a device called a ‘Marometer’ that measures how ensnared people are by sensuous things, most of the human race could certainly be called Mara’s minions. To be sure, Mara is the greatest of all tempters having no equal while most of the human race are daily educated to say “yes” to their base desires no matter how harmful they ultimately prove to be.
Some of us might even get lucky when we die being reborn as Mara. Apparently, one of the Buddha’s great disciples, Maha Moggallana the Elder, in one of his previous lives was Mara. His name then was Dusi whose sister Kali was the mother of the present Mara.
Compared with Mara, the Buddha seems to be Mr. Fun Sucker. In the literature the Buddha comes across as a cranky old dude who wasn’t in the best health having let his asceticism go too far. Still, the Buddha saw the perils of birth and death and, of course, rebirth; who also realized the bliss (sukha) of having finally liberated one’s self from the coils of illusion and suffering.
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