The Four Maras
May. 5th, 2025 07:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mickiBack to Pema Chodron, talking about the four maras.
The chapter talks about the buddha’s temptations by Mara while he's sitting to attain enlightenment. “The story goes that they shot swords and arrows at him, and that their weapons turned into flowers.”
What does this story mean? My understanding of it is that what we habitually regard as obstacles are not really our enemies, but rather our friends. What we call obstacles are really the way the world and our entire experience teach us when we're stuck. What may appear to be an arrow or a sword we can actually experience as a flower. Whether we experience what happens to us as an obstacle and enemy or as a teacher and friend depends entirely on our perception of reality. It depends on our relationship with ourselves.... Perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched. Maybe the only enemy is that we don't like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. But what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it is taught us what we need to know. If we run 100 miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. It just keeps returning with new names, forms, and manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.”
Then she talks about the four maras. The first is pleasure seeking; The second is how we always try to recreate ourselves or gain ground back to be who we think we are. The third is how we use our emotions to keep ourselves dumb or asleep. The 4th is the fear of death. To expand on the first one, pleasure seeking works like this: “ when we feel embarrassed or awkward, when pain presents us itself to us in any form whatsoever, we run like crazy to try to become comfortable. Any obstacle we encounter has the power to completely pull the rug out, to completely pop the bubble of reality that we have come to regard as secure and certain. When we are threatened that way, we can't stand to feel the pain, the edginess, the anxiety, the queasiness in our stomach, the heat of anger rising, the bitter taste of resentment. Therefore we try to grasp something pleasant. We react with this tragically human habit of seeking pleasure and trying to avoid pain.”
“Instead of trying to avoid our uneasiness in off centeredness by running away at, we could begin to open our hearts to the human dilemma that causes so much misery in this world. We could realize that the way to turn this devaputra arrow into a flower is to open our hearts and look at how we try to escape. With enormous gentleness and clarity, we could look at how weak we are. In this way we can discover that what seems to be ugly is in fact a source of wisdom and is a way for us to reconnect with our basic wisdom mind.”
“The next Mara is how we react quote when the rug is pulled out from under us. We feel that we have lost everything that's good. We've been thrown out of the nest. We sail through space without a clue as to what's to happen next . We're in no man's land: we had it all together, working nicely, when suddenly the atomic bomb dropped and shattered our world into a million pieces. We don't know what's going to happen next or even where we are. Then we recreate ourselves. We return to solid ground of our self concept as quickly as possible. Trungpa Rinpoche used to call this nostalgia for samsara.
“Our whole world falls apart, and we've been given this great opportunity. However, we don't trust our basic wisdom mind enough to let it stay like that. Our habitual reaction is to want to get back to ourselves- even our anger, resentment, fear, or bewilderment. So we recreate our solid immovable personality as if we were Michelangelo chiseling ourselves out of marble. Instead of tragedy or melodrama, this Mara is more like a situation comedy. Just as we are on the verge of really understanding something, allowing our heart to truly open, just as we have the opportunity to see clearly, we put on a Groucho Marx mask with fluffy eyebrows and a big nose. Then we refused to laugh or let go, because we might might discover-- who knows what. Again, this process does not have to be considered an obstacle or a problem. Even though it feels like an arrow or a sword, if we use it as an opportunity to become aware of how we try to recreate ourselves over and over again. It turns into a flower. We can allow ourselves to be inquisitive. If we're open about what has just happened and what will happen next, instead of struggling to reclaim our consciousness of who we are, we can touch into that mind of simply not knowing, which is basic wisdom mind.”
The chapter talks about the buddha’s temptations by Mara while he's sitting to attain enlightenment. “The story goes that they shot swords and arrows at him, and that their weapons turned into flowers.”
What does this story mean? My understanding of it is that what we habitually regard as obstacles are not really our enemies, but rather our friends. What we call obstacles are really the way the world and our entire experience teach us when we're stuck. What may appear to be an arrow or a sword we can actually experience as a flower. Whether we experience what happens to us as an obstacle and enemy or as a teacher and friend depends entirely on our perception of reality. It depends on our relationship with ourselves.... Perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched. Maybe the only enemy is that we don't like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. But what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it is taught us what we need to know. If we run 100 miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. It just keeps returning with new names, forms, and manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.”
Then she talks about the four maras. The first is pleasure seeking; The second is how we always try to recreate ourselves or gain ground back to be who we think we are. The third is how we use our emotions to keep ourselves dumb or asleep. The 4th is the fear of death. To expand on the first one, pleasure seeking works like this: “ when we feel embarrassed or awkward, when pain presents us itself to us in any form whatsoever, we run like crazy to try to become comfortable. Any obstacle we encounter has the power to completely pull the rug out, to completely pop the bubble of reality that we have come to regard as secure and certain. When we are threatened that way, we can't stand to feel the pain, the edginess, the anxiety, the queasiness in our stomach, the heat of anger rising, the bitter taste of resentment. Therefore we try to grasp something pleasant. We react with this tragically human habit of seeking pleasure and trying to avoid pain.”
“Instead of trying to avoid our uneasiness in off centeredness by running away at, we could begin to open our hearts to the human dilemma that causes so much misery in this world. We could realize that the way to turn this devaputra arrow into a flower is to open our hearts and look at how we try to escape. With enormous gentleness and clarity, we could look at how weak we are. In this way we can discover that what seems to be ugly is in fact a source of wisdom and is a way for us to reconnect with our basic wisdom mind.”
“The next Mara is how we react quote when the rug is pulled out from under us. We feel that we have lost everything that's good. We've been thrown out of the nest. We sail through space without a clue as to what's to happen next . We're in no man's land: we had it all together, working nicely, when suddenly the atomic bomb dropped and shattered our world into a million pieces. We don't know what's going to happen next or even where we are. Then we recreate ourselves. We return to solid ground of our self concept as quickly as possible. Trungpa Rinpoche used to call this nostalgia for samsara.
“Our whole world falls apart, and we've been given this great opportunity. However, we don't trust our basic wisdom mind enough to let it stay like that. Our habitual reaction is to want to get back to ourselves- even our anger, resentment, fear, or bewilderment. So we recreate our solid immovable personality as if we were Michelangelo chiseling ourselves out of marble. Instead of tragedy or melodrama, this Mara is more like a situation comedy. Just as we are on the verge of really understanding something, allowing our heart to truly open, just as we have the opportunity to see clearly, we put on a Groucho Marx mask with fluffy eyebrows and a big nose. Then we refused to laugh or let go, because we might might discover-- who knows what. Again, this process does not have to be considered an obstacle or a problem. Even though it feels like an arrow or a sword, if we use it as an opportunity to become aware of how we try to recreate ourselves over and over again. It turns into a flower. We can allow ourselves to be inquisitive. If we're open about what has just happened and what will happen next, instead of struggling to reclaim our consciousness of who we are, we can touch into that mind of simply not knowing, which is basic wisdom mind.”
