*3 Mara (from Sanskrit) is a figure personifying evil; Buddhism also uses it. Personified evil – Mara is personified during an intense mystical endeavor and tries to tempt us, since it is his sensual self that we try to expel from our being through a moral life. Mara's size depends on the overcome sensual self. The more we submit in our life to sensuality, the stronger the foe awaiting us at the threshold. In our struggle with Mara, the remaining susceptibility to the world that gives him strength tends to tip the scale in his favor, which renouncing the world gives strength to the being trying to extricate himself from the clutches of the sensual world. Mara guards the threshold that is only crossed by a mystical death*79. However, a lapse during this attempt to cross the threshold is not a mystical death, but a weakness for one's still strong sensual self.
