ABC
Religious texts
Religious schools and traditions
Heavenly beings and deities
Legendary and historical figures
Legendary and real places
Symbols and art
Doctrines and rituals
- Awakening
- Community
- Compassion
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- Dependent origination
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- Eightfold Path
- Emptiness
- Five Precepts
- Four Noble Truths
- Happiness
- Heavens and hells
- Impermanence
- Karma
- Koan
- Kung fu
- Meditation
- Merit
- Mindfulness
- Nirvana
- Non-self
- Om (mani padme hum)
- Parinirvana
- Pilgrimage sites
- Prajnaparamita
- Puja
- Pure lands
- Realms of existence
- Rebirth
- Recitation
- Renunciation
- Ritual
- Self
- Suffering
- Tales of rebirth
- Three Jewels
- Three-body doctrine
- Universal ruler
- Vesak
- Ye-dhamma formula
- Yoga
Mara
Heavenly beings and deities
Mara (Skt. ‘murderer’, ‘destroyer’) is a Buddhist deity and the personification of death. He represents all the passions, cravings, and attachments that obstruct the path to knowledge. He made several attempts to prevent Siddhartha Gautama’s own awakening – by sending an army of demons to kill him, for instance, or by having his three daughters (Discontent, Delight, and Desire) try to seduce him. Many artworks depict Mara’s efforts to tempt the Buddha.