Mara (demon)

In Buddhism, Māra is the demon who tempted Siddartha Gautama the Buddha by trying to seduce him with the vision of beautiful women who, in various legends, are often said to be Mara's daughters.See, for instance, SN 4.25, entitled, "Māra's Daughters" (Bodhi, 2000, pp. 217-20), as well as Sn 835 (Saddhatissa, 1998, page 98). In each of these texts, Mara's daughters (Māradhītā) are personified by Craving (taṇhā), Aversion (arati) and Passion (rāga). In Buddhist cosmology, Mara personifies unskillfulness, the "death" of the spiritual life. He is a tempter, distracting humans from practicing the spiritual life by making the mundane alluring or the negative seem positive.
The 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 have a decidedly humorous air to them.
In traditional Buddhism four senses of the word "mara" are given.
* Klesa-mara, or Mara as the embodiment of all unskillful emotions.
* Mrtyu-mara, or Mara as death, in the sense of the ceaseless round of birth and death.
* Skandha-mara, or Mara as metaphor for the entirety of conditioned existence.
* Devaputra-mara, or Mara the son of a deva (god), that is, Mara as an objectively existent being rather than as a metaphor.
 
Early Buddhism acknowledged both a literal and "psychological" interpretation of Mara. Mara is described both as an entity having a literal existence, just as the various deities of the Vedic pantheon are shown existing around the Buddha, and also is described as a primarily psychological force - a metaphor for various processes of doubt and temptation that obstruct religious practice. 
"Buddha defying Mara" is a common pose of Buddha sculptures. The Buddha is shown with his left hand in his lap, palm facing upwards and his right hand on his right knee. The fingers of his right hand touch the earth, to call the earth as his witness for defying Mara and achieving enlightenment. This posture is also referred to as the 'earth-touching' mudra.
==See also==
* Yama - The king of the dead in Buddhist mythology.
==Notes==
==Sources==
* Bodhi, Bhikkhu (trans.) (2000). The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya. Boston: Wisdom Pubs. ISBN 0-86171-331-1.
* Saddhatissa, H. (translator) (1998). The Sutta-Nipāta. London: RoutledgeCurzon Press. ISBN 0-7007-0181-8.
==External links==
* http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/guruge/wheel419.html
* Taming the Mara
* Buddhism. History of the Devil, by Paul Carus, [1900], at sacred-texts.com
Category:Buddhist deities, bodhisattvas, and demons
cs:Mára
de:Mara (Buddhismus)
es:Mara (budismo)
eo:Marao
fa:ماره
fr:Māra
it:Māra
ja:マーラ
ru:Мара
sr:Мара (демон)
sv:Mara (indisk mytologi)