Reading guide
A challenge stated as explicit sexist doctrine
Unlike this saṃyutta's other confrontations, which generally attack fear, grief, or desire, Māra's claim here is a direct assertion about women's capacity as such — not fear-mongering but a stated belief about gendered limitation, requiring a different kind of rebuttal than intimidation does.
A reply that refuses to argue on Māra's own terms
Somā does not respond by insisting women can, in fact, match men's wisdom, which would implicitly accept gender as the relevant category to measure; instead she asks what difference womanhood makes at all when the mind is serene, refusing the comparison Māra's challenge assumes is meaningful.
A stronger claim: gender itself is not the real issue
The verse's second stanza generalizes beyond the immediate exchange: it isn't merely that womanhood doesn't prevent awakening, but that anyone still invested in any self-identification — woman, man, or ‘I am’ in any form — remains within Māra's reach, gender identity treated as one instance of a broader category of vulnerability.
Fit for Māra to address: a precise closing formulation
‘Fit for Māra to address’ is a carefully chosen phrase: it doesn't say such a person will necessarily be defeated by Māra, only that they remain a meaningful target for him at all — Somā's own freedom from self-view is what places her, implicitly, beyond his reach entirely.
A discourse whose fame reflects its argumentative precision
This discourse's frequent citation, noted directly in SuttaCentral's own summary of this saṃyutta, likely owes less to its brevity than to how precisely its rebuttal identifies self-view, rather than gender comparison, as the actual philosophical target — a move applicable to any claim of essential limitation, not only this specific one.
Key terms
The text
§1At Sāvatthī. Then the nun Somā robed up in the morning and, taking her bowl and robe, entered Sāvatthī for alms. She wandered for alms in Sāvatthī. After the meal, on her return from almsround, she went to the Dark Forest for the day’s meditation, plunged deep into it, and sat at the root of a tree to meditate. Then Māra the Wicked, wanting to make the nun Somā feel fear, terror, and goosebumps, wanting to make her fall away from immersion, went up to her and addressed her in verse:
§2“That state’s very challenging; it’s for the sages to attain. With her two-inch wisdom, it’s not possible for a woman.”
§3Then the nun Somā thought, “Who’s speaking this verse, a human or a non-human?” Then she thought, “This is Māra the Wicked, wanting to make me feel fear, terror, and goosebumps, wanting to make me fall away from immersion!” Then Somā, knowing that this was Māra the Wicked, replied to him in verse:
§4“What difference does womanhood make when the mind is serene, and knowledge is present as you rightly discern the Dhamma. Surely someone who might think: ‘I am woman’, or ‘I am man’, or ‘I am’ anything at all, is fit for Māra to address.”
§5Then Māra the Wicked, thinking, “The nun Somā knows me!” miserable and sad, vanished right there.
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