What is the purpose of Māra disturbing sentient beings' cultivation?

The fifty kinds of skandha-māras discussed in the latter part of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra—which one of them does not possess vast supernatural powers, far beyond the reach of sentient beings, making them extremely envious? Yet those are all realms of māras. Ordinary, unremarkable people cannot enter the māra realm, and the māra would not even deign to look at them. Those who are noticed by the māra and utilized and blessed by him will gain vast supernatural powers, almost reaching the level of a Buddha. Sentient beings, unaware of this, are extremely greedy and attached, believing that anything extraordinary and uncommon must be a good state—with meditative concentration, so-called wisdom, and supernatural powers. But this is precisely the māra realm, the result of the māra's power of blessing. The outcome is that these people with vast supernatural powers cannot leave the māra and become the māra's retinue.

Why does the māra possess such great supernatural power? First, he has immense merit, meditative concentration, and supernatural powers. Second, he understands the Buddha-dharma—only understands it, but has not realized it. Even this understanding is already extraordinary, and is enough to destroy the Buddha-dharma and Buddhism. The Buddhist sūtras record that every time the Buddha preached, Pāpīyas knew which sūtra the Buddha was going to teach, knew the degree of importance of that sūtra, and also knew the karmic retribution sentient beings would receive after listening to the sūtra. Because he utterly refuses to let sentient beings attain liberation and escape his control, he transforms into various identities and forms to secretly disrupt the Dharma assemblies. Pāpīyas also manifests supernatural powers to attract sentient beings and preaches the Buddha-dharma to them; it appears as if he is delivering sentient beings, but in reality he is luring them into various afflictions and desires so that they cannot attain liberation.

One hundred years after the Buddha's parinirvāṇa, the Fourth Patriarch of the Chan school, the Venerable Upagupta, appeared in the world to propagate the Dharma. Every time the Venerable reached a crucial point in his teaching at a Dharma assembly—just as sentient beings were about to eradicate the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi) and realize the fruits—the māra king would secretly cause trouble, raining down gold, silver, and other jewels from the sky to attract the attention of sentient beings. Under such great disturbance, sentient beings could not eradicate the view of self and realize the fruits. When the Venerable was in meditative concentration, in order to destroy his samādhi, the māra king manifested all kinds of deformed and strange beings to harass and entangle the Venerable, but the Venerable saw through them all and broke the māra king's power. The māra king also repeatedly troubled the arhats, but was always dealt with by the arhats who possessed supernatural powers, and slunk away in defeat.

In the present age of the Dharma's decline, no matter what identity or form the māra king manifests, sentient beings lack the discernment to see through him; most will be deceived, and it is very difficult to stop them. When the māra's power arrives, sentient beings almost all lack the ability to resist, obediently submitting, prostrating themselves with utmost worship. When the māra king wants to disturb practitioners, he will certainly speak some relatively profound dharma that appears correct but is actually not. Only practitioners who have attained realization can distinguish the māra's teachings; ordinary people may all be attracted by the māra's words, believing his dharma to be profound.

Most people assume that since the māra king is a māra—wrangling and unruly—he must not understand the Buddha-dharma and must be an evil person who does no good deeds. In fact, one who does not understand the Buddha-dharma can absolutely never become a māra, and one who does no good deeds can also absolutely never become a māra. A māra who does not understand the Buddha-dharma could never disturb practitioners or destroy the Buddha-dharma; a māra who does no good deeds is of meager merit (alpa-puṇya), utterly lacking the merit to support him in doing evil, and he could not win over sentient beings to become māra sons and māra grandsons. The reason the māra king comes to disturb and destroy Buddhism and is able to win over sentient beings is precisely by relying on his own great merit. To satisfy his desire for a retinue, he does not allow sentient beings to study Buddhism and cultivate, lest they escape the desire realm and leave his control. Since sentient beings can only escape the desire realm by cultivating meditative concentration, and can only leave the desire realm by realizing the fruits and seeing the Path, the māra king directs his disturbances at these two kinds of people, leading them toward wrong paths. Other sentient beings the māra king will not bother with, knowing they all belong to him and are his retinue—including sentient beings who cultivate wholesome dharmas, whom the māra king will not disturb.

Therefore, in the initial stages of studying Buddhism, the māra king will not bother with sentient beings, and they will not encounter māra disturbances. For low and shallow Buddha-dharmas, the māra king will not bother to sabotage them either. Only when it comes to dharmas and people on the verge of transcending the boundary of the desire realm will the māra king find ways to interfere and sabotage, infiltrating some wrong views (mithyā-dṛṣṭi) at crucial points and adding some errors, so that sentient beings cannot attain realization—thus he achieves his goal.

So the māra king also preaches dharma, and he will not preach low and shallow Buddha-dharmas; he will certainly preach Buddha-dharmas related to the approach to liberation, mixed with plausible errors, sprinkled with some fog to confuse the eyes of the masses. Although the masses receive his teachings, they cannot attain realization, cannot attain liberation, and cannot escape the desire realm. When the masses wish to go to the land of bliss (sukhāvatī), the māra's karma does not permit it; he devises strategies to confuse people's minds so that sentient beings cannot be reborn in the land of bliss, and can only transmigrate through birth and death in the human realm of the desire realm in the Sahā world or in the three evil paths, under the māra king's control. And sentient beings, ignorant and lacking discernment—without the piercing golden eyes of Sun Wukong—cannot see it clearly; most will be deceived, and will even feel boundless gratitude, remaining obstinately deluded.