I was watching some videos on people who have recorded there schizophrania attack…they generally face there insecurities through this hallucinations…that this hallucinations talking to them that this is not proper this is not going to be good…
Isn’t when we read Buddha’s encounter with mara. Or any bhikkus encounter with mara. Is kind of same …
Mara poke them on there insecurities. Mara appear and disappear…even he has lost battle with buddha he continued to appear in front of buddha …
Second the mara didn’t appeard in front of all bhikkus. It appeared in front of some only…
Is hellucination is side effects of jhana …i know jhana are blissful and give peace but same time people experience hallucinations to.i heard one story in That headless ghost telling to Stop doing meditation in night.
In ancient India people named this hellucination as beings from other worlds…
The aims of western psychology are very different from Buddhist practice. One intends to make the individual fit as a contributing member of society and is limited, the other is individual centred- it offers freedom from suffering. So the outcome of understanding higher beings is only in the range of the latter.
I always take the paranormal beings that appear in the suttas ( I will not call them gods ) as fictional literary devices used to communicate a message. Metaphors, allegories, etc.
According to Choong Mun-keat, Mara in Mara Samyutta of SN and its two Chinese versions is presented as “threefold:
(a) he is a real being, an evil deity of temptation (the tempter and lord of sensuality); (b) he can be defeated only in a psychological sense, not by physical force; and (c) he appears in the texts more as an actual deity than as a result (personification) of psychological projection.
… early Buddhist adaptation of general Indian religious beliefs about divine beings (devas), and their application to one particular type of divine being – Mara.”
See pp. 40-2 in Choong Mun-keat “A comparison of the Pali and Chinese versions of the Mara Samyutta, a collection of early Buddhist discourses on Mara, the Evil One”, The Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies, vol.10, 2009, pp. 35-53.
Mara in Buddhism is different from theistic religions. He has no problems with moral, successful or socially well-functioning people, but he has a problem with advanced practitioners who seek to escape samsara. In fact, the Mara of Buddhism might feel happy if you do good deeds and reborn in a sensual heaven, and if you end up in hell or a lower realm, he does not care.
The Mara of theistic religions is believed to interfere with moral people because their highest goal is to return to sensual heaven, so he aims to send them to hell instead.
Imho, it makes Mara more evil. It’s why Mara is called “Evil one”. It’s an intelligent slave master trapping (and hunting) you with honey rather than a foolish slave master trying to trap you with vinegar. The slave at least knows the real deal with a foolish slave master, but is brainwashed by an intelligent slave master.
We are presented with a mission through a goal - oriented narrative, of which the nature of Mara can be contextualized in a way ensuring coherence to convey meaning. When the goal or the task is to escape samsara, then Mara is merely a gatekeeper. When the goal or the task is to seek more stable conditions (such as sensual heaven), then the enemy becomes naturally the one who tries to prevent you from that.
The two goals are considered legitimate in the Buddha’s teaching. Most lay followers would consider rebirth in a sensual heaven as a successful conclusion of this life. For ascetics, who have been taught the dangers of sensuality, the nature of the enemy is revealed. When the teachings take a sequential order, as in ud 5.3, a talk on heaven is followed by a declaration of the drawbacks, degradation, & corruption of sensuality, and the rewards of renunciation. Asking people to renounce what they do not understand, when they are inclined towards the sensual property increases suffering, and potentially leads to pathological guilt that is different from hiri and ottappa as taught by the noble ones. Seeing danger in this potential misunderstanding would enable the practitioner to take responsibility of his/her worldly affairs, without using Mara as a scapegoat.
I would add that the relationship between slave and master is interchangeable, and eloquently portrayed in the relationship between Mara and Baka in MN49. I have heard that when the Buddha confronted Mara before his awakening, all devas ran away out of fear except Baka, who protested a little bit before running away as well. How a creationist mind understands volitional actions, and how this justifies the modern psychological approach to pathology is quite interesting.
Thank you for sharing the video. Here is another one, of which Christian commentators on the movie likened it to their version of Lucifer.
