Reading guide
A second instance of the community-targeted deception
Following SN 4.16's ox almost immediately, this discourse confirms that trick was not an isolated case: Māra again targets the mendicants' attention rather than the Buddha directly, this time through sound rather than sight, suggesting a deliberate shift in tactics across this stretch of the vagga.
Sound mistaken for the earth itself
The specific illusion — a noise so loud ‘it seemed as if the earth were shattering’ — is cosmic in scale despite being, like the ox, a fabrication aimed at breaking concentration rather than a real physical event, echoing the earth-quaking imagery already used at SN 4.6 but now as illusion rather than hypothetical.
The lesson's own subject supplying the reply
As at SN 4.16, the Buddha's answering verse addresses exactly the topic he had been teaching when interrupted — here the six sense fields — turning the disruption itself into an occasion to continue, rather than abandon, the lesson in progress.
Bait as the verse's central image for the senses
‘The terrible bait that the world's infatuated by’ names sights, sounds, tastes, smells, touches, and ideas together as something that lures rather than merely exists, a framing this collection has used before (the lokāmisa, ‘world's bait’, at SN 2.19, SN 2.27, and SN 2.30) now applied specifically to sensory experience as a category.
Shining like the sun: an image of visible transcendence
The verse's closing image — a disciple who has slipped free of Māra's dominion ‘shines like the sun’ — offers something more affirmative than this vagga's more common closing formula of mere defeat, picturing freedom as radiant and visible rather than simply as an absence of bondage.
Key terms
The text
§1At one time the Buddha was staying near Vesālī, at the Great Wood, in the hall with the peaked roof. Now at that time the Buddha was educating, encouraging, firing up, and inspiring the mendicants with a Dhamma talk on the topic of the six fields of contact. And those mendicants were paying attention, applying the mind, concentrating wholeheartedly, and actively listening.
§2Then Māra thought, “This ascetic Gotama is educating, encouraging, firing up, and inspiring the mendicants with a Dhamma talk on the topic of the six fields of contact. And those mendicants are paying attention, applying the mind, concentrating wholeheartedly, and actively listening. Why don’t I go and pull the wool over their eyes?” Then Māra the Wicked went up to the Buddha and made a terrifyingly loud noise close by him. It seemed as if the earth were shattering, so that one of the mendicants said to another, “Mendicant, mendicant, it seems like the earth is shattering!” When this was said, the Buddha said to that mendicant, “Mendicant, that’s not the earth shattering. That’s Māra the Wicked come to pull the wool over your eyes!” Then the Buddha, knowing that this was Māra the Wicked, addressed him in verse:
§3“Sights, sounds, tastes, smells, touches, and ideas, the lot of them—this is the terrible bait that the world’s infatuated by.
§4But a mindful disciple of the Buddha has transcended all that. Having slipped free of Māra’s dominion, they shine like the sun.”
§5Then Māra … vanished right there.
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