In Buddhist mythology, what demon tried to prevent Buddha from achieving enlightenment? The answer is Mara.
Mara is the Buddhist personification of forces that obstruct awakening. In accounts of Siddhartha Gautama's enlightenment, Mara confronts the meditating Buddha with fear, distraction, desire, and a supernatural army. He attempts to break Siddhartha's concentration and claim that the future Buddha has no right to sit beneath the bodhi tree.
Mara is associated with death, rebirth, and sensual desire, so he is more than a conventional monster. Buddhist traditions also interpret him psychologically: greed, hatred, delusion, anxiety, and attachment can all function as forms of “Mara” because they keep beings trapped in conditioned existence. Traditional doctrine sometimes identifies four Maras, including death, the aggregates, defilements, and the deity who rules the sensual realm.
The Buddha's victory is symbolized by touching the earth and calling it to witness his accumulated merit. This gesture, called the earth-witness or bhumisparsha mudra, is frequently shown in Buddhist sculpture. Mara is therefore both a mythic antagonist and a symbol of the inner obstacles to liberation.