Reading guide
Possession, not illusion: Māra's most direct intervention
Unlike every manifestation or claim elsewhere in this vagga, this discourse describes Māra actually possessing human beings — the villagers of Pañcasālā — to produce a real, material consequence: the Buddha's bowl returns from alms round completely empty.
A taunt that assumes triumph, then an offer that assumes control
Māra's question — ‘did you get any alms?’ — already knows the answer and savors it; his follow-up offer to ‘make sure’ alms are given on a second attempt compounds the provocation, presenting himself as controlling access to something as basic as food.
A direct accusation, unusually explicit
The Buddha's own opening line in reply — ‘Māra has produced wickedness in attacking the Realized One’ — names the act as wickedness outright, a more explicit moral accusation than this vagga's more common pattern of simply denying Māra's claims.
A warning about consequence, not merely a rebuke
‘Do you imagine that your wickedness won't bear fruit?’ introduces the logic of karmic consequence directly into the confrontation, suggesting Māra's interference carries its own cost regardless of whether it succeeds in its immediate aim.
Nothing to lose, and rapture instead of food
The verse's closing claim — living happily with nothing, feeding on rapture ‘like the gods of streaming radiance’ — answers the material deprivation directly but on entirely different terms, naming a sustenance Māra's control over alms-giving villagers has no power to withhold.
Key terms
The text
§1At one time the Buddha was staying in the land of the Magadhans near the brahmin village of Pañcasālā. Now at that time in Pañcasālā the young maidens were occupied with guests. Then the Buddha robed up in the morning and, taking his bowl and robe, entered Pañcasālā for alms. Now at that time Māra had possessed the brahmins and householders of Pañcasālā, so that they thought, “Don’t let the ascetic Gotama get any alms!”
§2Then the Buddha left the village with his bowl as clean-washed as it was when he entered for alms. Then Māra the Wicked went up to the Buddha and said to him, “Well, ascetic, did you get any alms?” “Wicked One, did you make sure I didn’t get any alms?” “Well then, sir, let the Buddha enter Pañcasālā a second time for alms. I’ll make sure you get alms.”
§3“Māra has produced wickedness in attacking the Realized One. Wicked One, do you imagine that your wickedness won’t bear fruit?
§4Let us live so very happily, we who have nothing. We shall feed on rapture, like the gods of streaming radiance.”
§5Then Māra the Wicked, thinking, “The Buddha knows me! The Holy One knows me!” miserable and sad, vanished right there.
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