Staring at the beach in Brazil: Mara's lust

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Tan boy Samadhi Statue, 1870

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Are lust and loving-kindness emotions?

(Doug's Dharma) What did the Buddha teach about emotions?

Mara's at the beach, not on the battlefield

Christian holds sign at beach (Keith McManus)

Christians may imagine their Devil at war, killing, harming, maiming, and sending humans to the hells. But it isn't that way in Buddhism. Mara (the Destroyer) is sexy, a gentleman (shapeshifter), Mara Devaputra, more of a deluded Lucifer figure, imagining himself the Ruler of the Sensual Sphere.

In Buddhist cosmology, the universe is divided into three spheres or lokas (worlds), sections of the 31 Planes of Existence. The highest is the Immaterial Sphere (arupa loka), all mind, no form. The middle is the Fine Material Sphere (rupa loka). And the lowest is the Sensual Sphere (kama loka). Where would you, dear reader, imagine the Human World (manussa loka) is located?

Mara at beach would look more like Amatue

We are, of course, smack dab in the middle of the lowest section, the Sensual Sphere, characterized by sense craving manifesting mostly as lust (accompanied by aversion/hate and rooted in delusion).

Mara is not interested in harming anyone. His goal is seduction and keeping everyone within his sphere, reborn in worlds below his plane at the top of the Sense Sphere heavens (superior physical worlds in space). It displeases him greatly if anyone escapes to be reborn in the superior heavens of the Fine Material Sphere.

Get the heck outta here, you wandering ascetic! - Behold, Mara, the Earth says I may stay.

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It is probably unimaginable to him that there are even worlds beyond that, more subtle and sublime than the highest and most rarefied of the Fine Material planes.

While most of depicted as a "demon" (chief of the yakkhas or ogres), Mara has three very alluring daughters, Craving, Ennui, and Lust (aka Tanha, Arati, and Raga).

Three daughters

The Buddha-to-be was not swayed by deceptive lures.

In some accounts of the wander ascetic Siddhartha's enlightenment, it is said that the "demon" Māra did not send his three daughters to tempt. Instead, they came willingly after Māra's setback in his endeavor to eliminate the Bodhisatta's quest for enlightenment and liberation [16].

Mara's three daughters are identified as Taṇhā ("Craving" or "Thirst"), Arati ("Discontentment," a kind of "Aversion"), and Rāga ("Attachment" or "Passion") [15, 17].

For example, in the Samyutta Nikaya's section on Mara (the Māra Saṃyutta), Mara's three daughters are undressing in front of the Bodhisatta, but they fail to entice him.

They had come to him glittering with beauty

– Taṇhā, Arati, and Rāga –

But the Teacher swept them away then and there

As the wind, a fallen cotton tuft [18].

The three daughters of Māra were inspired by Aratis ("Avarice"), a type of feminine goblin associated with sensual craving [19]. More

• Sunny Beaches, April 16, 2025; Mara image (jendhamuni.com); Dr. Doug Smith (Doug's Dharma, April 28, 2025); Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit