Mara (demon)

Mara (मार, ; මාරයා; or ; Mara; also マーラ, Māra or 天魔, Tenma; Cheonma; Thiên Ma; Tibetan Wylie: bdud; មារ; မာရ်နတ်; มาร; Mara), in Buddhism, is a malignant celestial king who tried to stop Prince Siddhartha from achieving Enlightenment by trying to seduce him with his celestial Army and the vision of beautiful women who, in various legends, are often said to be Mara's daughters. In Buddhist cosmology, Mara is associated with death, rebirth and desire. Nyanaponika Thera has described Mara as "the personification of the forces antagonistic to enlightenment." The word Māra comes from the Sanskrit form of the verbal root mṛ. It takes a present indicative form mṛyate and a causative form mārayati (with strengthening of the root vowel from ṛ to ār). Māra is a verbal noun from the causative root and means 'causing death' or 'killing'. It is related to other words for death from the same root, such as: maraṇa and mṛtyu. The latter is a name for death personified and is sometimes identified with Yama. The root mṛ is related to the Indo-European verbal root *mer meaning "die, disappear" in the context of "death, murder or destruction". It is "very wide-spread" in Indo-European languages suggesting it to be of great antiquity, according to Mallory and Adams. In traditional Buddhism, four or five metaphorical forms of Māra are given: Kleśa-māra - Māra as the embodiment of all unskillful emotions, such as greed, hate and delusion. Mṛtyu-māra - Māra as death. Skandha-māra - Māra as metaphor for the entirety of conditioned existence. Devaputra-māra - the deva of the sensuous realm, who tried to prevent Gautama Buddha from attaining liberation from the cycle of rebirth on the night of the Buddha’s enlightenment. Early Buddhism acknowledged both a literal and psychological interpretation of Mara. Mara is described both as an entity having an existence in Kāma-world, just as are shown existing around the Buddha, and also is described in pratītyasamutpāda as, primarily, the guardian of passion and the catalyst for lust, hesitation and fear that obstructs meditation among Buddhists.