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34 Buddhism
acknowledged to exist, but they are not worshiped.
The ultimate aim of Buddhism is, rather, Nirvana,
meaning release from the ongoing cycle of death
and rebirth (reincarnation, referred to as samsara
in Buddhism and Hinduism). And this is a goal
with which divinities are unable to be of aid.
Similarly, while Buddhism contains an elaborate
mythology about hells and demons, there is no
figure with the stature of Satan. The closest being
in Buddhism corresponding with the Western
Devil is Mara. Mara’s job in the cosmic scheme is
to prevent individuals from achieving Nirvana.
The best-known story involving Mara is the
tale of his attempt to prevent the Buddha from
achieving enlightenment. The story goes that, as
Gautama was on the brink of Nirvana, Mara
became dismayed: “At this point the god Mara,
exclaiming, ‘Prince Siddhartha [the future
Buddha] is desirous of passing beyond my
control, but I will never allow it!’ went and
announced the news to his army, and sounding
the Mara war-cry drew out for battle.” Failing to
distract him with force or to frighten him with
ferocious demons, Mara sent beautiful, tempting
heavenly women (Buddhist nature spirits, or
apsaras) to distract his attention. Still undisturbed,
Mara finally challenged Buddha’s right to
liberation. In response, Gautama is said to have
called the earth as his witness, whose response was
so powerful that it frightened away Mara and his
hordes. That very night, the Buddha achieved
nirvana.
What keeps individuals trapped in the
samsaric cycle is the law of karma. Karma operates
impersonally like a natural law, ensuring that
every good or bad deed eventually returns to the
individual in the form of reward or punishment
commensurate with the original deed. It is the
necessity of “reaping one’s karma” that compels
human beings to reincarnate in successive lifetimes.
In other words, if one dies before reaping
the effects of one’s actions (as most people do), the
karmic process demands that one come back in a
future life. Coming back into another lifetime also
allows karmic forces to reward or punish through
the circumstance into which one is born. Hence,
for example, an individual who was generous in
one lifetime might be reborn as a wealthy person
in her or his next incarnation. Moksha is the traditional
Hindu term for release or liberation from
the endless chain of deaths and rebirths.
According to the Upanishadic view, what happens
at the point of moksha is that the individual
atman merges into the cosmic Brahman, much
like a drop of water, which, when dropped into the
ocean, loses its individuality and becomes one
with the ocean.
Buddha accepted the basic Hindu doctrines of
reincarnation and karma, as well as the notion,
common to most South Asian religions, that the
ultimate goal of the religious life was to escape the
cycle of death and rebirth (samsara). Buddha
asserted that what kept us bound to the
death/rebirth process was desire, desire in the
generic sense of wanting or craving anything in
the world of samsara. Hence the goal of getting off
the Ferris wheel of reincarnation necessarily
involves freeing oneself from desire. Nibbana—or,
in later Buddhism, nirvana—is the Buddhist
equivalent of moksha. Nirvana literally means
extinction, and it refers to the extinction of all
craving, an extinction that allows one to break out
of samsara.
But, someone might respond, why not just try
to live life, despite its many flaws, as best one can,
avoiding pain and seeking pleasure Because,
Buddha would respond, while we might be able to
exercise a certain amount of control over this
incarnation, we cannot foresee the circumstances
in which our karma would compel us to incarnate
in future lives, which might be as a starving child
in a war-torn area of the third world. Also, the
Buddha would point out, if we closely examine
our life, we can see that even the things that seem
to bring us our greatest enjoyments also bring us
the greatest pain. Thus while Buddhism includes
the notion of hells, it is clear that for the devout
Buddhist the real hell is life itself.
Although Buddha himself was profoundly
antispeculative and antimetaphysical, many of his
later followers were not. Particularly after
Buddhism split into Theravada (southern
Buddhism, found today in Sri Lanka and
Southeast Asia) and Mahayana (northern
Buddhism, found today in Korea, Japan, and
Taiwan), metaphysical speculation flowered in