Mara is discussed quite often in the suttas of the Pali Canon — the stories and teachings about the Buddha. What I’d like to do is offer two baskets. The first basket is understanding Mara from a more traditional framework, from how it was taught in the Buddha’s time. Then I’d love to shift into a more contemporary basket — how we can understand Mara in a way that feels relevant now.
Mara, traditionally, is personified as the ruler of desire, greed, and illusion. It is the personified embodiment of those forces. Energetically, habitually, it could be understood as the conditioned mind—the forces that keep us imprisoned in cycles of karmic suffering, these endless patterns of birth and death, over and over again.
When we practice, we’re getting ourselves off that wheel. We’re breaking the spell of karmic suffering. Mara is all about the spell. When we meditate, the mind begins to free itself— when we wake up from habitual patterns, “Mara” gives us a way of understanding what we’re meeting. It’s almost like every time we sit, we’re going into battle.
Sometimes it really feels that way, doesn’t it?
It’s like going into battle with our inner demons, an energetic karmic purification practice of sitting with our own minds. Because the mind is conditioned in so many ways — greed, aversion, delusion, ignorance — every time you take a seat, you’re breaking the spell. You’re going to battle with these forces.
Mara transcends being a mere character. In Buddhist tradition, Mara appears in many forms—sometimes he, sometimes she, sometimes an army, sometimes collective. It represents temptation, desire, and all the obstacles that impede the path to awakening.
But while Mara is personified so that we can understand it, it is not so much an external demon. It is a mirror to our own internal battles.
There are different kinds of Maras. One is the Mara of kilesas—negative emotions, mental defilements. Shame is a Mara. You can feel the spell it casts, the energetic pull of it. Then there is skandha Mara: the habitual pattern of selfing, ego, making everything personal. The way we take things so personally and suffer because of it.
There is also what is called mrityu Mara: rigidity, darkness, depression, life-destroying forces. And then devaputra Mara: the seductions of sensual pleasure, power, and all the ways we are pulled outward. An à la carte menu of Maras.
To understand Mara, it helps to return to the Buddha’s enlightenment. The Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree with determination and clarity. Because of the cultivation of wholesome qualities—mindfulness, awareness, compassion, wisdom—he knew intuitively that he was ready to let go fully into awakening.
He sat down and said, in essence: I’m going to remain here until I’m free. And then Mara appeared in many forms, like an entire army, trying to pull him off his seat. The first wave, in many tellings, is Mara’s daughters dancing—sensual seduction, desire, distraction.
Then all the deeper forces come: greed, fear, doubt, aversion. This is like a final purification of mind, heart, and body.
What is so beautiful is that the Buddha does not fight Mara. He calmly says: “I see you, Mara.” There is something in the seeing that breaks the spell. “I see you.” It is so gentle. “I see you for what you are.”
The awareness recognizes what is happening, and because it is recognized, we are no longer completely pulled in. This matters not only in meditation but in daily life. Calmly, non-reactively: I see you.
Then the Buddha touches the earth. This is the earth mudra, the gesture you often see in paintings of the Buddha with one hand on the ground. He says: “The earth is my witness.” There is something about the earth element that is not personal. It is simply presence. This is what is real. Not the storm of the mind, not the spell. And in that moment Mara’s forces dissolve.
Mara cannot claim the seat if awareness is present. Mara cannot touch awareness. A lot of this path is learning not to get pulled off the seat—not by fear, not by desire, not by doubt, not by inner stories.
Even boredom can be Mara. Mara can be very sly. In our time, Mara may not appear as an army under a tree. It often appears psychologically: habitual loops, reactivity, addiction, distraction. Social media can be Mara. Our phones can be Mara.
The endless pull outward, the trance of comparison, the compulsive grasping. Psychologically, Mara’s power is in reactive conditioned patterns that keep us asleep. A spell that tells you that you are not enough, not lovable, not worthy, not free.
That is why practice is heroic. To sit down and stay present with all of that. To turn toward what arises and simply say: I see you.
For me, one of the clearest experiences of this happened on retreat. I was sitting in deep concentration and suddenly felt a powerful force around me—something intense, almost sinister. I became frightened, and then I heard a voice say: “Who do you think you are?” It was terrifying. But awareness was present enough that something in me knew: Oh. I see you. And another response arose: No one is here. I put my hand on the ground, and it all dissolved.
Outside of retreat, I have also known Mara as the inner critic. For me it appeared like a slave driver—relentlessly pushing, always demanding more, always insisting that I do, achieve, prove. I realized this was tied to old conditioning: feeling that love came through achievement. When I finally sat with that part directly, I saw something different. The slave driver was exhausted. Sad. What it wanted was love.
So I said: I see you. And instead of resisting it, I told it: Go take a nap. Have a cookie. Would you like some milk? Because what was needed was kindness. That is how these inner demons soften—not through force, but through awareness and compassion.
That is how Mara begins to lose its power.
With gratitude,
Lisa