Under the dominion of evil

Besides suffering and disharmony, the Buddha also teaches us that life is actually about dying.  Yes, everyone will eventually die.  Even the infant just born is already dying.  Death is at work in every sentient being.  For Buddhists it is Māra, the adversary of the Buddha, who is death and killing; who is the tempter and the principle of evil and destruction.  When Radha asks the Buddha, How far is there [the realm of] Māra?”  The Buddha answers him, “Where a body is, there would be Māra or a thing of the nature of Māra perishing.”  Māra is also applied to the whole body of worldly existence including the realm of rebirth.  Māra is also opposed to nirvana.

Human beings today are under the dominion of Māra although they believe otherwise.  If you are a Christian reading this you are under the dominion of Satan.  Both are the same with respect to evil.  Mankind doesn’t know it but happiness is always short-lived.

Māra is always working in our corporeal body and our mental activity. If we lose our temper and become hateful we have taken Māra’s bait.  If we are craving sex unable to control ourselves, we have taken his bait.  If we are greedy and jealous, we have taken Māra’s bait.  The list goes on.  Since Māra rules the psychophysical body we don’t have to look very far to find him.  We are always under his dominion.  You could even say he governs the conditioned world. 

We can see from the aforementioned that Buddhist training is about teaching us how to recognized Māra saying, “No!” to him, not only physically but in the activity of our thoughts and emotions where our passions and desires are strongest.  Why is this training so necessary and important?  The simple answer is that in order to realize nirvana, i.e., the unconditioned, we have to gradually cut our ties with our old conditioned habits which only serve to strengthen the dominion of Māra rather than reduce it.

These days, teachers of Buddhism are not very good.  They seldom teach that Māra is also the Skandha Māra, that is, the Māra of the five aggregates that makes up the psychophysical body.  Here is an example:

“When there is form, Radha, there might be Mara, or the killer, or the one who is killed.  Therefore, Radha, see form as Mara, see it as the killer, see it as the one who is killed.  See it as a disease, as a tumor, as a dart, as misery, as really misery.  Those who see it thus see rightly.  When there if feeling ... When there is perception ... When there are volitional formations ... When there is consciousness, Radha, there might be Mara, or the killer, or the one who is killed” (S. iii. 189).

Logically, this also implies that anātman, which means not the self, is connected with Skandha Māra since what is not the self (anātman) is synonymous with the five skandhas of form, feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness.  And if the Buddha says that the first noble truth of suffering are the five aggregates, then also anātman is the first noble truth of suffering!

Comments

[smith]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHTZrxHB-so

[Adasatala]

I would be glad to hear a modern-day teacher actually point to Mind like the patriarchs used to, and in doing so scorching the entire earth and transforming countless buddhafields into pure and fiery brilliance.