He whispered beside the Bodhi tree as Māra, and he still whispers beneath your success. This is my encounter with the Ancient Imposter, and the Truth he was pointing at all along.
Before Self-Doubt Had a Name
They say the Buddha sat beneath the Bodhi tree and vowed not to rise until he found the truth that ends suffering.
What they don’t always say is that the first thing he met wasn’t the truth.
It was Māra.
Māra didn’t come only with fire and thunder. He came with piercing questions.
Whispers hissing in the dark. Doubt, cloaked in reason.
“Who do you think you are to seek enlightenment?” “What makes you believe you’re ready?”
He came not as a demon, but as a mirror, reflecting the fears Siddhartha thought he had already outgrown. Māra was not a monster. He was the mind’s resistance made visible. A shadow that looked like it stood outside, but had always lived within. And 2,500 years ago, beneath the shade of that Bodhi tree, Siddhartha saw him clearly.
Saw through the illusion. He saw Mara not as truth, but as the voice of doubt wearing a face, dressed in familiarity. The moment he stopped identifying with the voice, like all shadows, Māra began to fade.
In modern times, Māra still comes. Same doubts. Different disguise. Old wine in a new bottle.
He arrives right after you succeed. Not loudly. Not cruelly. Just quietly enough to make you question everything.
“You got lucky.” “They’ll find out.” “You don’t really belong here.” “You don’t deserve this success, and you know it. You’re fake. ” “You’re not good enough. You know that too.”
Today, we call him something else. We have given his voice a modern name, a clinical one. Imposter Syndrome.
When Gold-Lined Walls Began to Rust – A bit of a backstory
Siddhartha had once been a prince, shielded in his palace from sorrow and suffering.
But one day, the world slipped through the palace gates. It showed him what he was never meant to see, an old man, bent and frail, a sick man trembling. A dead man, still and cold. And finally, a peaceful wandering ascetic.
Four sights. Four quiet awakenings.
And four questions that wouldn’t let him rest:
Why do we suffer?
What is this life for?
Who am I beneath the roles?
And is there a way out of this endless cycle of ache?
He walked away from gold-lined halls, from his family, from every comfort, because the ache for truth was louder than the call to stay, and the palace that once protected him now felt like a prison.
He followed teachers. He starved himself.
He practised every austerity until even the striving began to feel forced and false.
And finally, tired but resolute, he sat beneath the Bodhi tree.
Not to chase enlightenment, but because there was nowhere else left to run.
The hunger had softened. The effort had drained him. There was nothing to attain.
Only one question remained, “Who am I?” And in that silence, he turned toward the only place he hadn’t yet looked. Within. In that stillness, something in the heavens shifted.
It stirred the one who always comes when the light of truth is near. Mara.
Māra sensed the cracks of awakening in Siddhartha. And this time, he returned with brutal force. Darker than ever. Just before the dawn arrives.
The Noise Before the Knowing
He didn’t come with arguments. He came enveloped by noise. Surrounded by demons. Thunder clapping overhead. Arrows hurled toward the One who dared to sit still.
Siddhartha didn’t move. He sat still under the Bodhi tree, and He simply witnessed.
And in that witnessing, the arrows turned to petals.
I was in the office, on a video call with my senior, who had just said, “You were really good in that session.”
And yet, something in me flinched. My heart began to race. Outwardly, I smiled, grateful and composed, but beneath it, I was bracing for collapse. As expected, a voice rose up within. Not loud. Not unkind. Just familiar.
“You got lucky. She doesn’t know the real you yet. You’re fake. One day, she’ll see through you.”
She was still talking on the call, something about planning the next phase and scheduling time for another meeting. But I wasn’t fully there anymore. I nodded, made a note of it all, and closed the laptop.
I sat there, quietly defeated by an internal battle no one else could see.
Emboldened, the voice went on, “You don’t deserve this. You’re not enough. And you know it.”
The Softer Faces of Sabotage
Māra’s storm had passed. But he never sends only fear. He also keeps seduction ready at hand.
When fear fails, seduction slithers in. And so, when Siddhartha remained unmoving amidst the storm and the shower of arrows, Māra’s daughters arrived. They didn’t shout. They comforted. They coaxed. They smiled, whispered promises of ease and adoration.
Each whispered a different temptation. Not to leave the path, but to walk it more cautiously. More beautifully. More perfectly.
Because they didn’t arrive as goddesses. They arrived as thoughts draped in my own voice.
Tanhā, the Pleaser: Approval Isn’t Oxygen
She came wrapped in compliments. Metrics. Praise.
She said, “They love you, so stay lovable.”
She made me crave approval like oxygen. She made me say ‘yes’ when I felt empty.
She didn’t demand I abandon the path, just polish it until I no longer recognised me.
Arati, the Numb One: Quiet Quitting of the Soul
She didn’t roar. She sighed. She came when I was tired, even after something went well.
She whispered,
“It’s too much. What’s the point of it all anyway?”
“Nothing works. We are all dying anyway.”
“You’re already exhausted, why bother?”
“You’ve done enough.”
She numbed my motivation with a quiet fog of futility. She didn’t stop me from caring.
She just made caring feel unsafe, like hope with a ticking clock.
So, I kept my effort measured, just enough to show up, never enough to shatter. She didn’t stop me. She just dulled the spark.
Rāga, the Perfectionist: Polished, But Never Present
She whispered: “You can have it all, if you control it all.”
She made me hide my hesitations.
She said, “Don’t let them see the cracks. You can’t afford it.”
She didn’t want me to express. She wanted me to rehearse.
Not to connect. But to impress.
And in the guise of self-protection, I began to shrink.
Not publicly. But inwardly.
The Invisible Threshold
Siddhartha had weathered the storms.
He had seen through the illusions of the breathtakingly charming daughters. So, then Māra returned, once again, this time not with arrows or with thunder, but instead with a question.
Not shouted. But whispered. Surgical.
The kind of doubt that walks in after the applause, and stares down at you, until it cuts through and you begin to wonder if you ever deserved it at all.
I had just joined a meeting when one of my seniors turned to me and said, “You weren’t in the team meeting today. Your leader appreciated all your efforts a lot.”
And I smiled, feeling grateful, when suddenly, a familiar voice quipped within me, “Now, now. Don’t get happy too fast. That’s not you. You know it. You’re not that good.”
Outwardly, I smiled politely and said, “He did? Thank you for letting me know.”
But inside, the voice hissed, “Leave it at that. It’s not you anyway. They’ve simply never seen the real you. And you felt happy when you heard that? Who do you think you are?”
I wanted the meeting to stretch longer. Not out of interest, but because silence meant hearing that voice again. But I could tell. The voice had hit the mark, and it knew.
Slowly, like a fog, dejection wrapped itself around my heart. I could feel the sudden constriction in my breathing. The meeting ended. I stayed back in the room. And as if on cue, the voice returned, louder this time.
“Who do you think you are?” Pause. And again, “Who do you think you are?”
It kept repeating over and over until it filled the room. Until it was no longer a voice, but just noise.
Deafening. Unrelenting.
Finally giving in, I whispered inwardly,“Ok. You win.”
I let the noise take over, and sat silently, turning within. I decided to sit right through it and closed my eyes.
“Who do you think you are? Who?”
It hissed, demanding to know. My hand rose to my heart. And something in that small, instinctive gesture sparked a flicker of recognition in me…a familiar pattern.
A remembering of a young man, a teacher, before he began to teach…reaching his hand toward the earth.
Fingers brushing the soil. Except this time, it felt like his hand was reaching through time, across centuries, into this very moment. Reaching out to me to signal.
And in that silent gesture, a steady, insistent question, in a very gentle tone, began to rise, beneath the hissing doubt, “Do you recognise?”
Siddhartha touched the Earth. And the Buddha rose.
“Who do you think you are?” Māra questioned Siddhartha. Not with scorn but with quiet certainty. As if this question had undone countless others before.
Siddhartha didn’t argue. He didn’t resist. He closed his eyes and, calmly with his right hand, slowly reached toward the earth. This ancient gesture, what the scriptures call the Bhūmisparśa mudrā (the earth touching gesture), was a call.
A silent invocation to the ground, the Earth beneath him, to bear witness to his right to awaken. To rise. To transcend. That touch didn’t defend. It declared.
“I have walked the path. I have witnessed the truth. And I claim no throne, only the stillness that cannot be shaken. Me. I Am.”
The Earth responded. Not with thunder. But with unshakeable stillness through Him.
A stillness that said, “I was there. I have seen him. He is mine. He is ready to rise.”
Because only one who grounds this deeply is ready to rise so fully. And the Buddha was born.
And in that moment, Māra knew. He had no power here.
The Buddha looked gently toward him and said,“I see you, Māra.”
Not with anger. But with a calm awareness. The kind that knows Māra, the imposter, exists, but also knows that Māra is not the whole. He is part of the play. The doubt before the clarity. The shadow that sharpens the light.
He can be seen.
Acknowledged.
And then let go of.
Because freedom doesn’t come from defeating Māra. It comes from no longer identifying with him.
When the Light Returns – And the shadows of self-doubt finally fade
My eyes flew open. A door unlocked. Light spilled in. The noise and hissing vanished. And in that moment, I saw clearly. I was just another soul with whom Māra was repeating his ancient game.
But this time, I wasn’t playing alone.
A young seeker had already walked this path. He had left me a signpost. A gesture.
A stillness to return to and ground myself in.
A wave of clarity washed over me. And I whispered, not out of fear, but recognition and relief. “I see you, Māra,” I said with a sigh of immense relief, recognising what or rather who, had always been beside me.
And the purpose of his presence.
That final question, “Who do you think you are?” was never meant to wound. It was an invitation. A cut for the light to pass through. A soft challenge to return inward and ask, “Who am I, truly?”
I saw Māra not as an enemy, but as the shadow that reveals the light. A reminder.
A threshold I had to cross.
I could feel a wave of warmth suddenly burst in my heart, and again, I said it, more freely this time, “I see you, Māra.”
He smiled.
“I see you,” I repeated as I could feel a smile begin to form on my face, too. His smile broadened.
And slowly, as if his work here was done, for now, Mara began to fade.
Freedom Without Victory- The smile that set me free
At that moment, across time and space, the eyes that first saw Māra beneath the ancient Bodhi tree, suddenly smiled in my heart. “And I see you,” I heard the smile say.
Not as a whisper of approval, but as the remembering of someone I had long forgotten. The witness in me.
I was never meant to win this battle through certainty.
Rather realise that there was no battle through presence. It was all simply shadow boxing. I was not meant to silence Mara. But simply acknowledge him by shining the light of awareness on him.
I was not meant to silence Mara. But simply acknowledge him by shining the light of awareness on him.
And choosing not to believe him. Well, after all, he’s an impostor anyway.
And that’s when I realised-
Freedom doesn’t come when the nagging voice disappears. It comes when you stop mistaking it for the Truth.
Curious where this journey of awareness began for me? It started with ten days, initially uncomfortable, and later beautiful when something began to shift for me….You can read about it in this story published in May 2019 in Ascent, a Medium publication:
PLEASE NOTE: © Harmonious Interventions. Anuja Pathak. All the content in this article is original and protected under copyright law. Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution is strictly prohibited.
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