Māra was angry, and unable to endure his rage, he released his wheel-weapon at the Great Person. By the Buddha’s contemplation of the ten pāramis the wheel-weapon turned into a canopy of flowers above him. Now at any other time when with anger Māra throws the razor-bearing wheel-weapon, it can cleave a solid stone pillar like a bamboo shoot. But now it rested there as a flower canopy. The rest of Māra’s company said, “Now he shall rise from his seat and flee!” and threw gigantic stone hammers at him. But the Great Person contemplated the ten pāramis and the hammers fell to the ground as clusters of flowers. The devas standing at the edge of the world-system stretched forth their necks and raised their heads. “Lost, alas, is Prince Siddhattha’s attempt to reach the summit of becoming. What indeed can he do?”
Then said the Great Person “Having completed the pāramis, the bodhistta’s seat on the awakening day (bodhisattānaṃ abhisambujjhanadivase pattapallaṅko) is won by me.” And he said to Māra—“Māra who has witnessed the giving of gifts by you?” Māra stretched out his hand in the face of the Māra-army and said, “These each have witnessed.” In an instant the Māra-company cried “I have seen it! I have seen it!”, making a sound like the earth splitting open. Then Māra said to the Great Person, “Siddhattha, who witnessed your giving of gifts?” The Great Person said “You have conscious (sacetana) witnesses to your gift-giving, but I have in this place no one conscious to be a witness. Leave aside the gift-giving by me in the remainder of my births, standing only on the Vessantara becoming—the seven-hundred-fold great gift-giving existence; this unconscious (acetana) great solid mass of earth (ghanamahāpathavī) is my witness.” From beneath his robe, he stretched out his right-hand as he declared, “In my Vessantara becoming were you witness or were you not witness of my seven-hundred great gift-givings?” He stretched out his hand to the surface of the great earth and the great earth said, “I witnessed you at that time,” as if with hundreds of shouts, thousands of shouts, hundreds of thousands of shouts. Thus the army of Māra was over powered.
Then Grimekhala the elephant said to the Great Person, “Given by you Siddhattha was the great gift, the supreme gift.” Contemplating the giving of Vessantara the one hundred and fifty yojana high elephant Girimekhala bend his knee to the ground. Māra’s company ran away in all directions, no two going the same way. Casting off their head gear and garments, they fled away, running straight ahead in whatever direction they faced. Then the assembly of devas seeing the flight of Māra’s army declared, “This is the birth of Māra’s defeat! Prince Siddhattha is victorious, let us make a victory pūja!” The nāgas cried out to the nāgas, the supaṇṇas to the supaṇṇas, the devas to the devas and the brahmās to the brahmās. With flower garlands in hand they came to the bodhi seat of the Great Person. The rest of the devas of the ten-thousand fold world system paid reverence with flowers in hand and stood praising him in various words. The sun had not yet set when the Great Person dispersed the host of Māra. The bodhi tree paid reverence by sprinkling his robes with blossoms. (Jāt-nid 2)
When we compare this version with the earlier one found in the Padhāna Sutta, the most evident difference is in the nature of Māra’s army. The ten armies of Māra in the Padhāna Sutta are treated as metaphors for various defilements: sensuality, discontent and so forth. In the Jātaka version, the defilements are not mentioned and the armies are fully personified as demonic beings intent on the Bodhisatta’s physical harm. Nevertheless, we should not push the metaphorical interpretation of the Padhāna account too far, for instance by interpreting Māra himself as a metaphor. There is no ground in the text for assuming that Māra himself represents simply a psychological state of the Bodhisatta—he is definitely meant to be a real entity.686 Note also a concealed parallelism with the canonical original in which the list of Māra’s “armies” comprise ten defilements; in this commentarial passage Māra makes ten assaults on the Bodhisatta with various weapons, and the Bodhisatta opposes them with the ten pāramis. The ten assaults of Māra in which he unleashed violent storms of various kinds ending with the use of a personal magic weapon are identical with those unleashed by the yakkha Āḷavaka in the story of his encounter with the Buddha.687 Most of the first seven attacks represent elemental forces of nature: earth, air, fire and water. The fourth attack, with a rain of weapons, which are technological artifacts, might represent either the defilement of anger or more fundamentally, the element of consciousness. The eighth, mud, represents a deluge of filth, a quality often associated with the lower realms as is also the ninth, darkness. It is impossible to know if one of these stories was cribbed from the other, or if this list common to both was significant a priori as representing the total forces of the conditioned world under the command of both these powerful entities.
The flight of the devas in the face of Māra’s army should not be seen as simple cowardice; Sakka, for example, has the attribute of a warrior-deity habitually at war with the asuras. This retreat of the devas tells us something about the nature of saṃsāra. With the notable exception of Brahmā, all of these devas and nāgas, no matter how potent, remain part of the plane of sense-desire and their entire existence is centred around satisfying their sense-desires. They are completely unable to oppose Māra not through any lack of martial prowess, but because he personifies that which is central to their own being. These devas, with their golden vimānas and their flocks of lovely dancing girls were powerless to resist the being who stands at the summit and as the personification of sensuality. The case of Mahābrahmā is somewhat different as the brahmās are in a realm beyond sense-desire. But Māra’s influence extends even into the rūpabhūmi, the plane of form where the brahmās reside. Here, his weapons are not sensuality but pride, wrong-view and the desire-to-be (bhavataṇhā).688 It is noteworthy that Mahābrahma’s flight was not completely headlong, in that he took time to plant the white parasol, an ancient Indian emblem of sovereignty, on the summit of the world (presumably Mt Sineru). Thus he at least contested Māra’s supremacy, albeit from a safe distance.
The climax of the episode is the Bodhisatta touching the earth and calling it to witness, which instantly disperses Māra’s host in a panic flight. The image of the Buddha in the “earth-touching” mudra, with one hand extended down so the finger-tips touch the ground, later became a favourite motif of Buddhist art and the story has been retold with variations throughout the generations. It is worth therefore closely examining the Jātaka version, which is the oldest one extant.
Māra challenged the Bodhisatta’s right to sit on that spot, a place charged with cosmic significance. This was the Bodhimaṇḍa, the “place of awakening”. The word maṇḍa is short for maṇḍala meaning a circle.689 This particular point on the earth was chosen by all previous Buddhas and is the only place where the attainment of Buddhahood is possible (MN-a 26; Jāt-nid 2). Māra challenges the Bodhisatta by saying he “has not won” the right to sit on that place. The verb used in Pali is pāpuṇāti defined by the PED as “to reach, attain, arrive at, obtain, get to, learn” and the sense here is that the right to sit in the Bodhimaṇḍa must be earned. This Prince Siddhattha has indeed done, by perfecting the pāramis over hundreds of life-times, and he throws the challenge back at Māra by focussing on the single pārami of dāna, “generosity or giving.” This was the last pārami perfected by the Bodhisatta. This was accomplished in his previous human birth as King Vessantara (Jāt 547). Māra, too, claims to have made great gift-giving and he calls his host as witnesses. Of course they noisily assent, “we have seen it! we have seen it!” This may be simple falsehood on their part as we certainly have no reason to assume that anyone in Māra’s thrall would tell the truth. Nevertheless, there may have been some truth to Māra’s claim. Whatever else Māra may be, he remains a deva of the highest order, the Paranimmitavasavatti realm. We have seen that generosity is a prime requisite for rebirth into the deva realms,690 and it can be inferred that to be born as Māra, a being must have made significant merit. Nowhere is it imp
lied that birth as Māra is an unfortunate one. When the Bodhisatta was living as a deva in Tusita, and the time came for him to take human birth for the last time, the other devas implored him by saying “Dear sir, you have completed the ten pāramīs not for the not for the sake of enjoying existence as Sakka, nor as Māra, nor as Brahmā, nor as a Cakkavatti but for the sake of transcending the world and attaining Buddhahood” (DN-a 14). This implies that rebirth as Māra is as desirable as that of Sakka or Brahmā or a Cakkavatti.
The Bodhisatta declares that he has no living witness. Specifically, he says that he has no witness who is sacetana “conscious” or more literally, “with intentional thought.” This is because he has spent 576,000,000 years as a deva in Tusita since his death as Vessantara. Instead he calls on the “great earth,” mahāpathavī to be his “unconscious,” acetana witness. When his finger-tips touch the earth the “unconscious” earth responds with speech, declaring aloud, “I have witnessed you at that time.” (Those familiar with later literary versions may be surprised that there is no mention here of the earth quaking). This was an event of great significance. The insensate material cosmos itself, there at the very “navel of the world,”691 affirmed the right of the Bodhisatta to the supreme seat in the world-system. Māra was left without recourse, his own elephant bent its knee to the Bodhisatta and the rest of his army fled away helter-skelter. Māra may be the supreme over-lord of the conditioned realm, but the Bodhisatta sat immoveable on the verge of the unconditioned, and was utterly beyond Māra’s power.
3:5:35 MĀRA AND THE BUDDHA II—AFTER FULL AWAKENING
Māra did not give up after Siddhattha Gotama attained to Buddhahood. On the contrary, Māra continued to watch him closely for another full year, looking for any mental defilement upon which he could seize and get the Buddha back under his power, or at the very least to prevent him from teaching others the way to escape from his realm.
One week after attaining Buddhahood, the Buddha was sitting under the Goat Herder’s Banyan Tree (ajapālanigrodha) reflecting on how good it was to be free from the ascetic practices which he now saw as useless and productive of suffering. Māra, knowing with his own mind the thoughts in the Buddha’s mind, addressed him in verse:
Abandoning those ascetic practices which purify men
Being impure you think yourself pure, but you have left the path of purity.
But the Buddha knew, “This is Māra Pāpimā,” and responded with verses of his own, declaring the futility of asceticism. Māra understood: “The Bhagavā, knows me! The Sugata knows me!” (These are epithets of the Buddha). Grieving and sorrowful, he disappeared (SN 4:1). This denouement becomes a repeated theme. Māra works most often by stealth and when he is known for what he is, he is defeated. This episode also illustrates the variety of Māra’s tricks in that he appeals here not to sensuality but to a perceived guilt at having abandoned asceticism.
Sometime during the first five weeks, Māra appeared before the Buddha in the form of a huge bull elephant, with the intention of causing terror in him. The elephant’s head was like a great block of stone, his tusks like pure silver and his trunk like a gigantic plough pole. The Buddha was not in the least frightened, nor fooled as to the identity of his visitor:
You’ve wandered a long time in saṃsāra, making beautiful and ugly forms.
Enough Pāpima! You are defeated, Antakā.
Māra realized that “the Blessed One knows me!” and disappeared (SN 4:2). Later in the Buddha’s career, Māra attempted these shape-shifting tactics again. At one time he appeared as a huge serpent (SN 4:6), and at another he assumed “various shining forms, both beautiful and ugly” (SN 4:3). In both instances the Buddha knew who it was, and Māra, “sad and unhappy, disappeared from that place.”
Eight weeks after the awakening, Māra again approached the Buddha and said, “Blessed One, you have perfected the pāramis and realized omniscience. You have achieved your goal. Why do you now concern yourself with the world? Now is the time to enter parinibbāna, Blessed One.” (DN 16). Parinibbāna is the final nibbāna of an awakened one; the cessation of the aggregates or physical death. The Buddha of course rejected this advice
When the Buddha began his teaching career in earnest, Māra turned his attention to thwarting the spread of the Dhamma. After the first rains retreat at Isipatana the Buddha decided to send the first sixty bhikkhus, all of them arahants, out into the world to spread the teaching. Māra thought, “This samaṇa Gotama is, as it were, conducting a great war. Not one or two is sent forth, the Dhamma will be taught by a crowd of sixty. Even if only one person were to teach, this would displease my mind, let alone all these! I must stop them.” Māra appeared and accused the Buddha in a verse of still being bound by snares both human and divine, i.e. still subject to sense-desires. The Buddha denied this and declared, “You are defeated (nihato lit. “humiliated”), Antaka!” (SN-a 4:5) A nearly identical exchange occurred shortly after when the Buddha addressed the new bhikkhus sent back by the sixty teachers (SN 4:4).
3:5:36 MĀRA AND THE BUDDHA III—MĀRA’S DAUGHTERS
After dogging the Buddha’s foot-steps for seven years, six before the awakening and one after, Māra finally realized that he would never find a moment of defilement on which he could seize and get the Buddha back under his power.692
Māra’s last attempt to find some fault with the Buddha has the air of desperation about it:
Are you sunk in sorrow, that you meditate here in the forest?
Have you lost wealth, or do you desire it?
Perhaps you’ve committed a crime in the village.
Why is it that you don’t make friends?
You aren’t sociable with anyone!
The Buddha declares his freedom from sorrow, for the desire even for existence and from any sense of “me or mine.” He tells Māra, “This you should know, Pāpima. My path you cannot see.” Māra then admits that the Buddha has found the path to the deathless (amata) but asks him what point there might be in teaching it to others. To this, the Buddha replies that when people ask him about what lies beyond this realm of birth and death, he tells them. Māra finally admits the hopelessness of his task and compares himself to a crab taken from its pond and tortured by village boys. Every time the crab extends one of its claws, the boys would cut it off or smash it. “Even so, sir, you have broken up and cut off all my manoeuvres, tricks and schemes. Now, sir, I am unable to find any opportunity of approach to the Blessed One” (SN 4:24).
The conclusion of the Padhāna Sutta tells us what happened in Māra’s own words:
“For seven years I have followed the Blessed One’s footsteps.
I have not found any opportunity, he is fully awake and mindful.
A crow circled around a stone which had the colour of flesh;
‘This may be something tender, this may be something delicious.’
Not obtaining anything edible, the crow departed from there.
Like the crow striking the stone, I have been disappointed in Gotama.”
Overcome with grief, the vīṇa dropped from his armpit,
And that sad yakkha disappeared from there. (Sn 3:2)
The vīṇa was Māra’s musical instrument, and it was this same one which was taken up by the gandhabba Pañcasikha, and which he used to play a rather inappropriate love-song in the presence of the Buddha (Sn-a 3:2 & DN 21).
Then the devaputta Māra, having fallen into despair sat by the highway scratching marks in the dirt with a stick and contemplating the various qualities of the Buddha.
“I have not perfected the ten parāmis, so I have not become like him. I have not attained to omniscience, nor reached the great compassion, so have not become like him.”
At that time the three daughters of Māra, Taṇhā, Arati and Ragā (“Desire”, “Discontent” and “Passion”) were looking for him. “Our father is not seen at present, where could be be?” They found him there, sitting by the highway scratching in the ground with a stick. They went up to
him and asked, “Why, daddy (tāta), are you so sad and unhappy?”
“My dears, the great samaṇa has passed beyond my power. For a long time I have looked for a chance, but I have not been able to see one, that is why I am sad and unhappy.”
“If that is so, think not of it. We ourselves will use our power, and having taken him, will bring him here.”
“It is not possible, my dears, to use your power on this one. He is unshakeable: established in confidence is this man.”
“Daddy, we are women. We will ensnare him with lust and having captured him, bring him here. Do not think about it.”
So the three daughters of Māra approached the Blessed One and said, “We will serve at your feet, samaṇa.” But the Buddha paid no mind to their speech and did not even open his eyes to look at them.
The daughters of Māra said to one another, “The preferences of men are various. Some have affection for young virgin girls, some for young women, and some for women in middle-age. What if we seduce him in these various forms?” So one by one they each created one hundred forms. They manifested virgin girls, young women who had not yet given birth, those who had given birth once or twice, middle-aged women and older women. Six times these approached the Blessed One and said, “We will serve at your feet, samaṇa.” But the Buddha paid no attention to them, for he was sitting in the unsurpassed liberation that is the destruction of the basis of becoming (anuttare upadhisaṅkhaye vimutto).693
Then the daughters of Māra went off to one side and said to one another, “Our father spoke truth: there is an arahant, a well-farer (sugato) in the world. This one is not easily taken by desire. He has escaped Māra’s domain. Thus, he sorrows so. If we had attacked any samaṇa not beyond passion with these tactics, either his heart would have burst, or he would have vomited hot blood or he would have lost his mind or he would have dried up, withered and faded away like an old reed.” (SN 4:25)
The Buddhist Cosmos Page 53