Mara holds the Wheel of Life

Art Resource, Inc.



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Siddhartha resisted every temptation Mara could devise. The lord of
desire had one final test. He demanded to know who would testify that
Siddhartha was worthy of attaining ultimate wisdom. And his demon army
rose up to support him. Siddhartha said nothing. He reached down and
touched the ground, and the earth shuddered. Mara’s demons fled.

W.S. Merwin, poet:
“The Buddha reaches down, and with his finger, touches the earth. He
says, ‘The earth is my witness.’ He said, ‘Mara, you are not the earth.
The earth is right here beneath my finger,’ and the earth is what we’re
talking about. Accepting the earth, not owning the earth, not possessing
the earth, but the earth just as it is, abused and exploited and
despised and rejected and, plowed and mined and shat on and everything
else, you know. It’s still the earth, and it is, we owe everything to
it.”

Siddhartha meditated throughout the night, and all his former lives passed before him.

Robert Tenzin Thurman, scholar:
“He remembered all his previous lives—infinite number of lives—female
and male and every other race and every other being in the vast ocean of
life forms. And he remembered all that viscerally so that means his
awareness expanded until all the moments of the past were completely
present to him.”

D. Max Moerman, scholar:
“He gains the power to see the process of birth, death, and rebirth
that all creatures go through. He’s given this sort of cosmic vision of
the workings of the entire universe.”

As the morning star
appeared, he roared like a lion. “My mind,” he said, “is at peace.” The
heavens shook, and the Bodhi tree rained down flowers. He had become the
“awakened one”—the Buddha.

Mark Epstein, psychiatrist: “Something new opens up for him which he calls Nirvana, which he calls Awakening.”

Jane Hirshfield, poet: “He
said, at this moment all beings and I awaken together. So it was not
just him. It was all the universe. He touched the earth. ‘As earth is my
witness. Seeing this morning star, all things and I awaken together.’”

Thurman: “It’s
not like entering a new state; it’s uncovering or surrendering to the
reality that has always been there. He realized he’d always been in
Nirvana that Nirvana was always the case; your reality itself is
Nirvana. It’s the unreality; it’s your ignorance that makes you think
you’re this self-centered separate being trying to fight off an
overwhelming universe and failing. You are that universe.”

The Buddha sits on demons under the bohi tree.

Cleveland Museum of Art



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Epstein: “You’re already enlightened. He’s saying the capacity for enlightenment, that your awake-ness already exists within you.”

Hirshfield:
“Nirvana is this moment seen directly. There is no where else than
here. The only gate is now. The only doorway is your own body and mind.
There’s nowhere to go. There’s nothing else to be. There’s no
destination. It’s not something to aim for in the afterlife. It’s simply
the quality of this moment.”

Merwin:
“Just this, just this, this room where we are. Pay attention to that.
Pay attention to who’s there, pay attention to what isn’t known there,
pay attention to what is known there, pay attention to what everyone is
thinking and feeling, what you’re doing there, and pay attention. Pay
attention.”

Continue to “Teachings”