Māra is the evil spirit who can't stand anyone escaping from his influence, and thus tries his very best to stop everyone from attaining Nibbāna. At the same time, 'Māra' is also used by the Buddha as a metaphor for the defilements in our heart, greed, hatred and delusion, that prevent us internally from reaching liberation.We can symbolically describe our spiritual practice as a martial arts fight with Māra/defilements. Just like one has to build up strength in a professional boxer, before sending him into the ring to fight the reigning world champion, so we have to gradually build up strength in our spiritual struggle. Whenever anger, lust and confusion arise in our mind, we see it as an opportunity to do some 'sparring' with defilements, to build up strength and technique for the big championship fight one day.However, as someone in the audience points out, it feels very painful to get knocked out in a real boxing fight. On the other hand, getting defeated by Māra/defilements can feel so sweet! But we should never surrender to that 'sweet defeat', as bitter regret will follow later on. Instead, we have to get up again and continue to fight back.www.dhammagiri.org.auwww.facebook.com/dhammagiri-forest-hermitagewww.youtube.com/channel/UCJINt0JJBfFm_x0FZcU9QJwwww.tinyletter.com/dhammagiri/archive