Touch the Earth by Oxana Poberejnaia

I suddenly felt sad. Not depressed, but low and sorrowful. I realised that it must have been because I had just exploded and answered my husband in an angry, tense voice. He had said something and I reacted in this overblown manner. What he said could have been construed as an encroachment on my rights as a woman and a human. Whether this was the case or not, I was saddened by my own violent reaction.

How did that happen? Earlier that very day I was walking outside, quietly surveying autumn scenery of the North West England. The leaves were starting to turn in earnest. The birch trees sent their yellow carved leaves to the other side of the road, which did not have birch trees. I was in a state where my “I”, my “Ego” was relaxed and not constricted to just the confines of my body. I became conscious of this fact and a thought arose: “Here we go, finally I am getting close to Liberation.”

Rodney Smith from Seattle Insight Meditation Society once said that “Ego” will not let any such thought slip past it. The moment we decide on any identity for ourselves, including “a spiritual person”, the Ego will do everything to prove us wrong and to make us feel a failure. Another word for these “attacks” is Mara – The Evil One of Buddhist mythology and iconography.

It was Mara who, according to the tales of the Buddha’s night of Enlightenment, sent a sequence of hindrances down the Buddha’s way. Different versions of the story list images of the past, spirit armies and arrows, which the Buddha turned into flowers. Finally, when all this proved futile, Mara sent his own daughters to seduce the Buddha. The Buddha was able to withstand every attack. He also put his hand down to touch the earth, indicating that he has the right to be here in this spot where he is going to attain Enlightenment. This posture has become one of the traditional ways to depict the Buddha.

These stories are absent from the canonical texts. However, Mara is a character from the Canon. And the legends about the Buddha’s life are still part of Buddhist tradition, if not the official scripture.

My attention was previously focused on the attacks by the Mara and on the Buddha’s skillful and fearless deflecting them. I also noticed the lovely connection between the Buddha and the Mother Earth, whose blessing and protection he needed in order to get enlightened.

However, after reflecting on my experience, I realised that Mara’s attacks on the night of Enlightenment were not the essence of the story: they are simply plot lines. They could have happened earlier or later. And they did. According to the Buddhist Suttas, Mara appeared in the Buddha’s life on several occasions, prior to and after his Enlightenment.

The main focus of the story is actually the Buddha’s gesture of being in one spot and knowing that he had the right to. Where does this right originate? From the Buddha’s past and present lives’ virtuous deeds and accumulated spiritual practice.

To put it in other words, it does not matter if Mara tries to seduce one or not. The point is to be prepared (yes, like a Girl Scout), at every moment. To be grounded at every moment. To have all the work you have done supporting you at all times. To know that you are giving your all at every moment.

What happened at the moment when I heard my husband say something that I took to be offensive was a “knee-jerk reaction.” After seeing my pride in my grounded and boundary-eliminating state, Mara threw me a curved ball: he used my sense of self-righteousness. I immediately contracted from the expanse I experienced earlier. I became tense, and this tension was released in the form of an annoyed utterance.

The sorrow I felt almost immediately afterwards must have been my grief for the freer state that I myself ended and also exhaustion from wasting so much energy. This is what Mara does: he tricks us into reversing on our path to Enlightenment. He steals the energy that might have gone onto good causes into building an “Ego”, which then feels the need to protect itself.

This is why I said at the start of this post that it does not matter whether my husband’s statement was patriarchal or not.

My reaction came from “Ego”, and not from my rightful spot on the Mother Earth. “Ego” does not care about feminism or any other cause. It only cares about preserving itself and will use anything to make people proud, isolated, and opinionated. In short, Mara will use anything to keep “Ego” from disappearing and to keep Enlightenment from happening.

Oxana Poberejnaia is a frame drummer, writer and an artist at http://poeticoxana.wordpress.com. She was an Officer of the University of Manchester Buddhist Society while studying for a PhD in Government, and had been involved in organising the Manchester Buddhist Convention. Oxana is exploring the Sacred Feminine through frame drumming, working with her menstrual cycle, frame drumming and shamanic journeying, while keeping the practice of Buddhist meditation. Her frame drum band can be found here.

Author: Oxana Poberejnaia

Oxana Poberejnaia is a frame drummer, writer and an artist at http://poeticoxana.wordpress.com. She was an Officer of the University of Manchester Buddhist Society while studying for a PhD in Government, and had been involved in organising the Manchester Buddhist Convention. Oxana is exploring the Sacred Feminine through frame drumming, working with her menstrual cycle, and shamanic journeying, while keeping the practice of Buddhist meditation. Her world music band can be found here. https://somaworldmusic.wordpress.com/ View all posts by Oxana Poberejnaia