In this image from Thailand, for example, Mara is represented as an army of demons on our right (the Buddha's left) attacking the Buddha, as he sits in perfect equanimity under the Bodhi tree. In response, the Buddha touches the Earth with his right hand, to call upon the Earth Goddess (the voluptuous deity represented below) to witness his victory over the forces of evil, and she obliges, in this iconography, by rinsing out her long hair, thus causing the demons on our left (the Buddha's right) to drown in the resulting deluge (an image similar to that of the Red Sea inundating the Egyptian army in the Old Testament).
I found this icon interesting this morning, simply because the Earth Goddess figure--the Thai equivalent of Gaia--is represented with such voluptuous beauty. For many other stories associate sensuality with the Daughters of Mara, likewise sent forth to distract the Buddha from his meditation, and likewise failing. So in this way, Mara represents both fear and aggression (as symbolized by the demon army) and sexual allure (as represented by the daughters). Yet here, the voluptuous Earth Goddess is represented as the ally of the Buddha, effortlessly washing away the demons.
I was reminded of the erotic aspect of Mara yesterday, when a performance of Richard Strauss's operatic rendition of Oscar Wilde's scandalous play Salome came on the radio. Since I find merely listening to opera on the radio rather boring without the visuals, I went onto YouTube, where I found a spectacular production in full, starring Maria Ewing, an exotic and multiethnic opera star, in a scorching performance of this iconic femme fatale--a figure in our cultural history who personifies both the erotic and destructive aspects of Mara.
The opera culminates in the notorious Dance of the Seven Veils, an alluring dance and strip act that Salome performs to tempt her lascivious uncle Herod to grant her non-negotiable demand for John the Baptist's head. In Wilde's (and Strauss's) telling of the story, she wants his head on a platter because he (like the Buddha) has resisted her allure, and spurned her own desire for him as the one man she could not conquer--a desire she culminates by kissing the severed head on the mouth.
In this performance of the dance, moreover, the talented and provocative Ewing goes all the way, beginning enshrouded in multicolored veils, and peeling off each veil in a breathtakingly frenetic and sensuous dance, and ending up completely nude, in a statuesque pose.
Her intensely erotic performance was so alluring and captivating that it set my hormonal juices flowing, so that I have had difficulty erasing this image from my mind. For, old as I am, I am still, at root, an animal--still susceptible to feminine allure--to the Daughters of Mara. Yet a man of my age (65) needs to be especially wary of such erotic feelings, lest he end up a pantaloon, a humiliated dirty old man, like the besotted professor in the classic German film Blue Angel.
All of which brings me back to my original question about the Thai painting, where the sinuous feminine figure, alluring in her own right, is not the tempter, but the ally of the Buddha. To me this suggests that, for men, feminine sexuality is not Mara per se--it only becomes Mara when it distracts us, when we become hung up on it. We can learn, however, like the Buddha in this image, to see beautiful young women not as temptations to be either seduced or resisted, but rather as images of the sacred, as embodiments (no pun intended) of Gaia, one more reminder, in Blake's words, that "Everything that lives is holy." This is, perhaps, why the Buddha signifies his defeat of Mara by touching the Earth--reconnecting with the source of life. May we all do likewise.
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