Reading guide
An even more abstract display than the elephant
Where SN 4.2 gave Māra a specific, describable creature, this discourse offers only colors — beautiful and ugly, named but not otherwise particularized — stripping the intimidation attempt down to its barest visual register.
The same verse, reused exactly
The Buddha's first verse here is word for word identical to his reply at SN 4.2, applied without modification to a form that isn't even a specific animal this time — confirming that the verse addresses shape-shifting as such, not any particular manifestation.
A second verse this discourse adds beyond SN 4.2
Unlike its immediate predecessor, this discourse does not stop at dismissing the display; it adds an explanatory verse naming exactly why such tactics fail: those well restrained in body, speech, and mind ‘don't fall under Māra's sway, nor are they your footmen’.
Restraint named as the actual defense
The added verse locates Māra's power specifically in unrestrained conduct — implying that his displays are not universally powerless, only powerless against someone whose body, speech, and mind are already disciplined, a qualification absent from the more categorical dismissals at SN 4.1 and SN 4.2.
Footmen: a detail naming Māra's followers
‘Nor are they your footmen’ introduces a term this saṃyutta will develop further — the possibility of being not merely tempted by Māra but actually enlisted in his service, a category the well restrained are said to be entirely outside of.
Key terms
The text
§1So I have heard. At one time, when he was first awakened, the Buddha was staying in Uruvelā at the root of the goatherd’s banyan tree on the bank of the Nerañjarā River. Now at that time the Buddha was meditating in the open during the dark of night, while a gentle rain drizzled down. Then Māra the Wicked, wanting to make the Buddha feel fear, terror, and goosebumps, approached him, and while not far away, displayed a rainbow of bright colors, both beautiful and ugly. Then the Buddha, knowing that this was Māra the Wicked, replied to him in verse:
§2“Transmigrating for such a long time, you’ve made forms beautiful and ugly. Enough of this, Wicked One! You’re beaten, terminator. Those who are well restrained in body, speech, and mind don’t fall under Māra’s sway, nor are they your footmen.”
§3Then Māra … vanished right there.
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