Satan is necessary

 Mara is the Buddhist equivalent of Satan. It is also part of us, and we need it to find the Buddha (‘bud’ means awake, and ‘dha’ means pure, with all karma exhausted).

The Buddha describes Mara as ‘the maker of limits’. Psychologically, if I’m in a state of anger or attachment, I’m limited. I’m trapped in Mara’s snares. Mara is that which blocks our way, limiting our capacity to realise our true potential – Enlightenment.

In the traditional story of the Buddha’s Enlightenment, Mara tried and failed to tempt the Buddha back to worldliness. Mara was defeated. But that does not mean he has gone away.

If we take Mara out of the picture, we lose sight of that part of the Buddha with which we can identify – our negativity. Remember that the nature of negativity is wisdom. We can appreciate and see ourselves in Mara much more easily than we can in the Buddha: until enlightenment, we won’t know what true Buddha qualities really are.

If can bring these two parts together, we can see the unity of the two truths: the Buddha in humanity, and Mara in enlightenment!

In this sense, Mara is not just a problem – Mara is necessary for Enlightenment to happen. Mara is the problem without which there would be no solution.

Satanism is reflected in our own negative emotions of: hatred, pride, jealousy, desire (hope), aversion (fear) all because we do not recognise (ignorance) our true nature.

The way we can practically achieve this, is to understand the true nature of our negative emotions -which is wisdom.
We need to deepen our understanding.