Reading guide
The same question, an even barer answer
"They speak of 'Māra'. How is Māra defined?" — the identical question already asked at SN 23.1, but answered here without any of that discourse's elaborate imagery (murderer, murdered, diseased, boil, dart, gloom) or its chain of five purposes.
"Rādha, form is Māra, feeling is Māra, perception is Māra, choices are Māra, consciousness is Māra" — the bare identification alone, each aggregate named individually rather than gathered under a shared formula.
The standard closing formula, given in full one last time
"Seeing this, a learned noble disciple grows disillusioned with form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness. Being disillusioned, desire fades away... there is nothing further for this place" — Khandhavagga's familiar closing sequence, given here completely spelled out, since this vagga's remaining discourses will increasingly compress it with ellipses.
Establishing a template of maximum compression
This discourse's own extreme brevity — a bare identification with no supporting image or argument — sets the pattern for an entire vagga built the same way: Rādha asks what a term means, the Buddha answers "the aggregates are/have [term]" with no elaboration, and the standard formula closes each discourse.
Why a second, barer treatment of Māra opens this vagga
Placing this stripped-down version immediately after SN 23.1's own elaborate treatment (with its imagery and its chain of purposes) suggests a deliberate contrast: having shown Māra's identification with the aggregates developed at length once, the collection now demonstrates the same content survives complete compression, needing neither image nor argument to remain meaningful.
Key terms
The text
§1At Sāvatthī. Seated to one side, Venerable Rādha said to the Buddha: “Sir, they speak of ‘Māra’. How is Māra defined?”
§2“Rādha, form is Māra, feeling is Māra, perception is Māra, choices are Māra, consciousness is Māra.
§3Seeing this, a learned noble disciple grows disillusioned with form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness. Being disillusioned, desire fades away. When desire fades away they’re freed. When they’re freed, they know they’re freed. They understand: ‘Rebirth is ended, the spiritual journey has been completed, what had to be done has been done, there is nothing further for this place.’”
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