The defeat of Mara
This Transcendence or Awakening is called the defeat of Mara, the Killer (Māra parājaya), which is the embodiment of evil. Throughout human history, in every religion and every culture, this idea of a conflict between God and the Devilhas been expressed. This conflict is in fact the conflict between good and evil within human nature. In Buddhist thinking the Buddha takes the place of God and Mara takes the place of the Devil. In modern psychology, Sigmund Freud recognized this conflict as the conflict between the ego and the id. Today it is expressed as the conflict between the cognitive and the affective. In common parlance it is seen as the conflict between the head and the heart. The aim of the Buddha was to resolve this conflict between emotion and reason. This resolution is achieved through the wisdom of the Buddha and not his power. It was achieved through a process of evolution of the human consciousness.
The defeat of Mara also means overcoming death. This means that the Buddha attained immortality. This immortality, however, is not eternal life. It does not mean that he became eternal. He simply awoke from the dream of existence. Existence is seen in Buddhism as a dream or delusion. The normal human being is only dreaming of existence. He “does not really exist.” In other words, the normal human being is not fully conscious. It is only when he has become fully conscious that he awakens from the dream. This awakening is a matter of growth or evolution. This process of evolution, however, is not an unconscious process, as in biological evolution. It is a conscious process of psychological evolution. It has to be achieved through a conscious wilful effort of each individual. “Each individual has to make the effort, a Buddha can only show the way” (Dhammapada verse 276).