Buddha’s meeting with Mara and the enlightenment that ensues

by Vic Shayne
author
The Self is a Belief: The idea that causes suffering

The metaphor and analogy of Mara, god of illusion, self, and temptation.

In the story of Siddhartha Gautama who becomes the Buddha, Siddhartha spends years trying to find the source of suffering, which means the source of the egoic sense of self that is bound up in the belief that it is separate from the totality of consciousness. It is this egoic self that is the cause of all suffering, as it endlessly seeks pleasure and to avoid pain. It is who we call “me,” or “I,” and continually places the sense of identity upon external factors — possessions, the body, relatives, objects, phenomena, ideas, memories, and so on. This egoic self has often been called the false self. Carl Jung called it the persona, and Joseph Campbell referred to it as the mask to the world.

This sense of a personal self was the illusion that Siddhartha sought to conquer. He spent many years trying different ways to accomplish this — by starving the physical body, through ritual and prayer, by meditating, and through knowledge. But nothing brought him what he wanted. All of this searching brought him to the point wherein he sat down beneath the bodhi tree and said that he would not leave until he was successful in finding the answer to his suffering.

After sitting in meditation for a while, Siddhartha was visited by Mara, the god of Illusion. If you can appreciate myth and metaphor, then this story has great significance, not just for Buddhists, but for anyone who feels the urge to discover who he/she is beyond this superficial life and transient experiences.

Mara the god of Illusion
Mara is the ultimate metaphor for the the thoughts and phenomena that comprise the egoic self. Believing that we are the world, phenomena, and the beings that our egoic selves create is what keeps in play all of the trappings of illusion and what is deemed to be important. It is a trap that the self cannot seem to escape, if for no other reason than the fact that the self cannot use its usually tools with any success.

Mara is the distraction that keeps the mind firmly entrenched in all things that are impermanent, sensually alluring, intellectually and physically satisfying, fear-inducing, comforting, entertaining, and pleasurable. If Mara can be seen for what he is, then freedom results — freedom from attachment and identification with the body’s myriad associations that keeps the mind in a state of spiritual darkness.

The metaphoric light of enlightenment
Enlightenment is the metaphoric light that reveals who Mara (illusion) truly is. When we come to appreciate metaphor then we understand that Mara is not a god that is outside of Siddhartha, but rather he is the contents that embody the belief system of the egoic self of Siddartha — as well as the egoic self of all of us. The act of dissolving the belief that one is a product of the world is what sets a person free; freedom is moksha. For those who have gone through this process of moving beyond the self, it becomes obvious that the world is inside of us — inside the Self of consciousness.. When you conquer Mara, you conquer the self. But you cannot do it with the usually reliable tools of the mind, by fighting, arguing, pleading, fooling, distracting, hiding, or resisting. Moksha comes from fully realizing the illusion.

Mara is the monster in the closet
In previous works, I have described an analogy that may be helpful to better understand this predicament of the egoic mind:

When a small child sees a monster in his closet, too afraid to leave his bed, he calls out into the darkness for his mother. She comes into his bedroom and lays down beside him, holding him in her loving embrace. While the mother’s presence is comforting, it does nothing to remove the belief of what is in the closet. The fear is still present, because the illusion is still strong in the child’s mind. But when the mother turns on the light (metaphor for enlightenment), then the child can investigate for himself that the monster is only caused by shadows and that there really is nothing to be afraid of. The mother does not need to convince the child that the monster is not there with words, rituals, prayers, or images, because now he can see this for himself. If the mother simply explains that there is no monster, then the child may still have doubt and fear, or he can trust so deeply in his mother that his belief changes. If the latter happens, there is still no realization, and merely a belief. He has exchanged one belief for another — a belief that there is a monster in his closet to a belief that there is no monster.

In this analogy, the child does not need to fight or defeat the monster— he only needs to discover that the monster does not really exist; the monster is only an illusion created by his own mind.

There are a few key lessons in this process. First is that the guru (the mother in this analogy) can do no more than act as a guide, because no person can cause you to have a realization; this is something each person must do for him/herself. Second is that illumination leads to realization and that words, comfort, encouragement, control, fighting or even loving, does not take the place of personal revelation. Third is that fear and pain may be powerful forces that lead to the desire to change and to enquire into the source of suffering. When the fear is great enough, the child calls the mother; when the fear and suffering is great enough, the person calls the guru. The guru can literally be a mother, or it can be one’s self, or it can be an enemy, a pet, nature, a book, or any other being, object, or experience. But the guru does not transmit a realization; he, she, or it merely points the way to the source of the suffering by shining light upon it and revealing it for what it is. It is up to the student to see what the truth is and wake up.

Buddha’s awakening
The name Buddha means the awakened one.

In his quest to find the source of suffering, Siddhartha spends a lot of time trying to figure out his own mind and suffering. By the time he sits down beneath the bodhi tree he is ready to see the truth and not be swayed by all of the thoughts and phenomena that the egoic self are usually distracted by. He is tired of all of this and ready to face whatever comes his way. All of the thoughts, actions, desires, fears, and so on, of the egoic mind are embodied in Mara. Mara is finally defeated when Siddhartha quietly and resolutely refuses to buy into his distractions —not by fighting him or even embracing him, but rather by finding the middle way of simply being one’s authentic Self of consciousness.

Buddha realizes that Mara is a representation of himself and all of his desires, fears, and attachments. This is an interesting idea about consciousness: If it is realized that you are consciousness, then you also realize that all is within you, both good and bad, and all other complements and dualities. None of these things are actually you, but rather creations of a fearful and eternally dissatisfied egoic self.

Finding the Middle Way
In psychology, on a very personal and worldly level, authenticity is a major theme in the Buddha story. Authenticity is how to find the happiness we all seek. It is about letting go of all the unimportant things in life and not being distracted by either the pleasurable or the painful. This is what is meant by the repeated teaching, “Just be.” To be yourself is to be what you are between pain and pleasure — the Middle Way. The Middle Way is what lies between Siddhartha and Mara, which is the Buddha.