Immoderate in his food, idle and weak, him Mara will certainly overthrow as the wind throws down a feeble tree."īuddhism in its original and orthodox purity knows nothing of devils except Mara, representing the egotistical pleasures, sensuality, sin, and death but Buddhist "He who lives looking for pleasures only, his senses uncontrolled, The allegorical nature of the Evil One is plainly felt in every passage in which Mara's name occurs. In the Dhammapada, Mara is not so much a person as a personification. Similarly, according to the Buddhist conception, the heaven of sensual delight is hell, the habitation of the Evil One. Peter informed him that he was in Hell,įor hell is where everybody has his own sweet will, and heaven is where everybody follows God's will alone. Peter and to complain of how monotonous it was in Heaven, whereupon St. He then ordered breakfast, the daily papers, and all the comforts he was accustomed to in life, and this kind of life lasted for many centuries until he got sick of it and began to swear at St. Peter appeared before him and asked him what he wanted. This reminds us of one of Leander's Märchen, in which we are told that once a man died and awoke in the other world. It means that the selfishness of man is Satan and the actual satisfaction of selfishness is Hell. There is a deep truth in this conception of Mara as Varsavarti. He is the king of the Heaven of sensual delight. In his capacity as Varsavarti, Mara personifies the fulfilment of desire or the triple thirst, 3 viz., the thirst for existence, the thirst for pleasure, the thirst for power. In addition he is said to be Varsavarti, 2 meaning "he who fulfils desires." Varsavarti, indeed, is one of his favorite names. Mara is also called Papiyan 1 the Wicked One or the Evil One, the Murderer, the Tempter. The name Namuche means "not letting go the waters." However, Indra, the god of thunder-storms, forces him to surrender the fertilising liquids and restores the life-bringing element to the earth. Namuche is the mischievous spirit who prevents rain and produces drought. He is identified with Namuche, one of the wicked demons in Indian mythology The many-sidedness of Buddhism is well illustrated in the Buddhistic conception of evil and of a final escape from evil, which is taught to the thinker in the shape of a philosophy, and to the uneducated masses in the garb of a poetical myth, affording the artist a good opportunity for representing deep thoughts in allegorical form.Įvil is personified in Mara, the Buddhist Devil, who represents temptation, sin, and death. He recognised the existence of evil and sought salvation in the radical abolition of all selfishness through the extension of an all-comprehensive love toward all creatures. Gautama Shakyamuni, who claimed to be the Enlightened One, the Buddha, rejected bloody sacrifices, the authority of the Vedas, trust in rituals and the caste system, and taught a religion of moral endeavor which was to be obtained by enlightenment, or the bodhi. History of the Devil, by Paul Carus,, at īUDDHISM is a religious revolution against the evils that are dominant in Brahmanism.
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