Mara · Pāli: māra

Mara is, in the words of the Access to Insight glossary, the personification of evil and temptation. His fullest early portrait is the Padhana Sutta (Snp 3.2), which shows him coming, under the name Namuci, to the future Buddha as he made a great effort beside the river Neranjara. His approach is not a threat but reasonable, kindly sounding advice: “You are ashen, thin. Death is in your presence… Live, good sir! Life is better.” Give up the exertion, he says, and make merit instead.

What makes the discourse so useful is the reply. The Buddha-to-be answers by naming Mara’s forces one by one: “Sensual passions are your first army. Your second is called Discontent. Your third is Hunger & Thirst. Your fourth is called Craving. Fifth is Sloth & Drowsiness. Sixth is called Terror. Your seventh is Uncertainty. Hypocrisy & Stubbornness, your eighth” (trans. Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu). The list runs on from there to gains, offerings, fame and status wrongly gained, and to praising oneself while disparaging others, which is why Access to Insight calls them the ten armies of Mara. Mara’s army, in other words, is made of states of mind, which is why the tradition can read him at once as a character in the texts and as a name for whatever in us resists the path.

He loses, and he does not stop returning either. In the same discourse he admits that for seven years he has dogged the Blessed One’s steps without gaining an opening, and leaves with his lute slipping from under his arm. These verses are translated from the Pali; for his place in the story of the awakening, see Mara in Buddhism.