The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

Please visit our website at audiodharma.org.

Good morning. Good morning.

Thank you for that sit together. It's lovely to sit together.

So this morning I'd like to talk a little bit about stories.

And the role that they play and some of the stories we tell ourselves and certainly some of the stories that are in our tradition.

So there's one story that probably many of you are familiar with and that is the story about the Buddha's awakening.

The story goes that after the Buddha to be after renouncing both like this central endulgement and all possible central pleasures.

And then going to the opposite extreme and having this extreme asceticism nearly starving himself to death.

So after trying both of these extremes and that didn't work, he didn't become awakened, then he decided, OK, well, I'm going to meditate and he's going to go under a tree and sit and not move until he was awakened and until he was enlightened.

And while I was sitting there under the tree, the story goes, there's a number of different versions of this story is often is the case when there are stories is that he was visited by Mara.

Mara tried to entice the Buddha to be with these different fantastic things central endulgences.

And when that didn't work, he attacked the Buddha to be with armies.

And that's a little bit what I'd like to talk about in our week together is about these different armies that Mara used to attack the Buddha to be before his awakening.

So that this story here, so we might say that Mara and the story symbolizes that which gets in the way of our further freedom, our awakening, this movement towards enlightenment.

I might say that Mara represents some people might say the hindrances, certainly, you know, Mara, we could say it's the hindrances, but it's also more than that.

It's that which gets us that captures us and makes us think that we don't need to move along this path towards greater awakening or distracts us from this path towards greater freedom.

So Mara as a character, I want to emphasize that he's not like satanic.

Sometimes I've heard different teachers or writings that have referred to him more as this demon or demonic, but I would say that real important distinction between Mara and any satanic ideas we might have is that Mara absolutely has no wish.

For beings to do evil or to be in hell, it's actually the opposite. Mara wants individuals to enjoy all this sense pleasures they can imagine.

Mara would like for us to have the best food ever, the best vacations ever, the best sex ever, the best anything, just so that we feel intoxicated by essential pleasures and are indulging in them again and again and again.

And instead of like seeking towards greater enlightenment or awakening, we're find ourselves the endlessly seeking and searching and striving towards freedom and peace, but never finding it because we're like stuck with these enticements of whatever it is that gets in the way of our awakening gets in the way of greater freedom and peace.

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