Who Is Mara to You?

"First, what is Mara's domain? Where does he operate? At one point the Buddha indicated that each of the five skandhas, or the five aggregates, as well as the mind, mental states and mental consciousness are all declared to be Mara. Mara symbolizes the entire existence of unenlightened humanity. In other words, Mara's realm is the whole of samsaric existence. Mara saturates every nook and cranny of life. Only in Nirvana is his influence unknown. Second, how does Mara operate? Herein lays the key to Mara's influence over all unenlightened beings. The Pali Canon gives initial answers, not as alternatives, but as varying terms. First, Mara behaves like one of the demons of [then] popular thought. He uses deceptions, disguises, and threats, he possesses people, and he uses all kinds of horrible phenomena to terrify or cause confusion. Mara's most effective weapon is sustaining a climate of fear, whether the fear be of drought or famine or cancer or terrorism. Identifying with a desire or fear tightens the knot that binds one to it, and, thereby, the sway it can have over one."

As in most Buddhist teachings, the point of Mara is not to "believe in" Mara but to understand what Mara represents in your own practice and experience of life. Jnana Sipe said,

"Mara's army is just as real to us today as it was to the Buddha. Mara stands for those patterns of behavior that long for the security of clinging to something real and permanent rather than facing the question posed by being a transient and contingent creature. 'It makes no difference what you grasp', said Buddha, 'when someone grasps, Mara stands beside him.' The tempestuous longings and fears that assail us, as well as the views and opinions that confine us, are sufficient evidence of this. Whether we talk of succumbing to irresistible urges and addictions or being paralyzed by neurotic obsessions, both are psychological ways of articulating our current cohabitation with the devil."