Understanding the Five Types of Mara : หน้า 22/164

Suzanne Jeffrey "The second type is called Kanta Mara and that is about the human body. Our present biology says that man is body, but in higher biology, man is composed of the human body and the mind which consists of four functions: sensation/perception (happiness, sadness, neutrality, etc.), memory, mental formation or thought, and knowing or consciousness. All five of these together (the body and the four functions of the mind) are called Kanta Mara. If we feel pain, that is Mara, because pain obstructs our goodness. We start to focus on our pain and then start to feel sorry for ourselves. The 'Why does this have to happen to me?' 'Why can't I get this done?' kind of thinking starts. Then we attach to this thinking and become angry, or sad, so that this Mara is allowed to influence you, and when we don’t check it, it becomes you, and you label this as your ‘self’. "The third type of Mara is called Gamma: Action/Formation. This happens, for example, when a person is born with one eye. In this situation, there can be two levels of meaning: (1) it could be an abnormal birth, or (2) it could be the effect of a cause, or bad action performed in the distant past. Remember that we have been in a constant cycle of birth-rebirth. In other words, it could be caused by the actual birthing process in which something happens due to a fault in the delivery, OR, it could be due to a karmic consequence performed before the current birth within the cycle of that person's birth and re-birth, in other words, due to something connected with a past action of the person being born. "Fourth, Deity is a type of Mara that controls or influences beings or things to serve a certain purpose. In this type of Mara, we usually can't see the cause of what we see: we see its soldiers, not it, itself. Mara wants to be worshipped, but is a false god: A wrong view god who will not actually show its self. It may present its self to be a beautiful person who tries to persuade us to travel the wrong road, or a saintly person who leads us to believe something false. And he will use any means that will trick us into not possessing the Right View. "Finally, Mara is Matuman, or Death. And our own fear creates this Mara. We are afraid of death, of course, out of ignorance. We do not know what will happen to us when we die, so we are afraid. But if we meditate, of course, we would know that this is, indeed, Mara, and then we would not be afraid. "There is indeed an all-encompassing and greater Mara that is seen through deep meditation. This is the most evil because it is all around us and permeates everything, even our meditation, if we are not careful. The only way to destroy Mara is for every individual to