three Maras

MĀRA: A CHAMBER OPERA on good and evil

Libretto by Stephen Batchelor, Music by Sherry Woods

MĀRA is a chamber opera in two acts, with libretto by Stephen Batchelor and music by Sherry Woods. The opera humanizes the story of Siddhattha Gotama and his encounters with Māra, the demonic figure that appears to him as he seeks a way to live an awakened life in the world.

Listen

A full recording of MĀRA was created from the two concert performances of the opera that were given at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York on October 18 and 20, 2017. The full opera can be streamed at the composer's web site, Sherry Woods Composer.

Libretto

The libretto used for the concert performance at the Rubin Museum (October 2017) can be found here.

Synopsis

ACT ONE

SCENE I: THE RENUNCIATION. Gotama, the young man who will become the Buddha, paces around the stage. His distraught parents stand to one side. Gotama expresses his longing to achieve freedom from craving and gain insight into the meaning of human suffering. He vows to become a wandering ascetic despite the grief it will cause his parents. After he leaves, his father and mother reveal themselves as Māra, the demonic tempter, and his seductive daughter Tanhā. Their despair turns to cynical laughter, and Tanhā mocks Gotama’s intentions. Māra sings of his ability to know Gotama’s weaknesses and vows to obstruct him whenever he can.

SCENE II: THE VICTORY. On the bank of the Neranjara River, in the shade of a tree, Gotama sits, emaciated, determined, composed. Māra approaches holding a guitar. He tries to persuade Gotama to relinquish his quest for awakening, but Gotama is resolute in his resolve. Desolate, Māra withdraws and sits to one side. His daughter Tanhā appears and assures her father that she will seduce Gotama and lure him away from his goal. Despite her efforts, she fails. She admits that Gotama has passed beyond all temptation and there is no way to prevent him from reaching his goal. Māra, Tanhā, and Gotama sing, each in his or her own world. Overcome with sorrow, Māra drops his guitar and vanishes.

SCENE III: THE AWAKENING. Alone, Gotama sits beneath the bodhi tree and considers what it means to have reached the goal of full awakening.

ACT TWO

SCENE I: THE REJECTION. The second act opens with the figure of Korakkhattiya, the “Dog Man,” an ascetic. Gotama enters accompanied by his disciple Sunakkhatta, who is impressed with Korakkhattiya and declares him to be enlightened. Gotama rejects this suggestion, which leads Sunakkhatta to complain that Gotama has failed him by not performing any miracles or teaching him the origin of things. Gotama dismisses these criticisms as irrelevant to his teaching. Sunakkhatta decides to abandon him and leave the order of monks.

SCENE II: THE DENUNCIATION. Gotama is in a woodland grove near the city of Vesali, the hometown of Sunakkhatta. His attendant Ananda arrives and tells him that Sunakkhatta has just denounced Gotama to the parliament in Vesali as a mere intellectual without any supernatural powers. Gotama rejects Sunakkhatta’s criticisms by treating them as unintended praise.

SCENE III: THE SICKNESS. Gotama is staying in the small village of Beluva, outside Vesali, where he has just completed what will be his final Rains Retreat, during which he fell ill and nearly died. Māra is hidden in the background. Ananda approaches Gotama, declares his grief at seeing his teacher so ill, and implores him to live. Gotama berates him for not understanding how everything that is born must die. He delivers a stirring address, which includes the injunction “shine forth like a lamp.”

SCENE IV: THE RESOLVE. In the gloom of the Capala Shrine, where Gotama has gone in search of solitude, Māra approaches him from a dark recess. Now that Gotama has completed his life’s work, he argues, it is time for him to depart this world. Gotama tells Māra not to worry, as he has achieved what he resolved to do and his death will not be long delayed.

SCENE V: THE LAST MEAL. This scene takes place in the town of Pava in the mango grove of Cunda the Smith, who has invited Gotama and Ananda to a midday meal. After eating a dish called “pig’s delight,” Gotama instructs Cunda to bury the food. He then collapses onto the ground, groaning in pain. He has just enough strength to enable Ananda to help him reach the nearby town of Kusinara.

SCENE VI: THE DEATH. In the Sal grove of the Malla people in Kusinara, Gotama lies on his right side between two trees. Flowers fall from above as he speaks. Ananda breaks down and weeps. Gotama explains to Ananda how he envisages his teaching and community to continue after his passing. He offers final words on what constitutes the heart of his teaching. After uttering the words “Things fall apart, tread the path with care,” he dies. Venerable Mahakassapa, a senior monk in Gotama’s community, pays homage, and Ananda sings the final chorale.

Notes

A Note from Stephen Batchelor (Libretto):

My interest in Māra – the Buddhist equivalent of Satan in the Abrahamic religions – began after the publication of Buddhism without Beliefs in 1997. The success of that book led to my being offered a contract by my publisher to write a sequel on any related topic of my choice. After a number of false starts, I chose to focus on the figure of the demonic in Buddhism. I had become intrigued both by the psychological subtlety and symbolic complexity of Māra as well as how he served as a constant counterpart or shadow to the Buddha, the ideal of human perfection. The more I explored this theme in Buddhist and other traditions, it became increasingly clear that you cannot have enlightenment without confusion, any more than you can have light without darkness.

Gotama is said to have achieved enlightenment beneath the Bodhi Tree by conquering the armies of Māra. Yet nearly all of the numerous interactions between the Buddha and Māra occur not before but after this awakening. To gain victory over Māra, therefore, does not mean that Māra disappears from one’s life forever. For Māra is built into the fabric of existence itself. Māra denotes whatever stands in the way of realizing one’s values, irrespective of whether one is a Buddha or an ordinary person. The term “Māra” is rooted in the word for death and literally means “the Killer.” Another term for him is Namuci, the drought demon of Vedic mythology, whose name means “the one who holds back the waters” of life. Betrayal, denunciation and opposition to one’s plans befall everyone, including the Buddha. As, of course, do sickness, aging and death. Gotama overcame Māra not by getting rid of him but by gaining insight into how he works.

I decided to divide the opera into two acts with three singers. The first act tells of Gotama’s renunciation as a young man of twenty-nine (Scene 1), his conquest of Māra and his seductive daughter Taṇhā (Scene 2) and his awakening beneath the Bodhi Tree (Scene 3). The second act recounts the last months of Gotama’s life at the age of eighty. We begin with his being rejected (Scene 1) and denounced (Scene 2) by his disciple Sunakkhatta, followed by his last sickness (Scene 3), the recalling of his resolve (Scene 4), his final meal (Scene 5) and his death (Scene 6). Although separated by a gap of forty-five years, during which time the Buddha travelled through north-east India to teach the dharma and establish his community, the two acts mirror each other: in the first we witness Gotama’s victory over Māra, while in the second we see how as a mortal human he too is eventually overcome by the forces of betrayal, denunciation, sickness, aging, and death.

A Note from Sherry Woods (Composer):

The music for MĀRA is written in an eclectic tonal style inspired by Western composers from as early as Hildegard of Bingen up through the composers of our own time. This story of one man’s spiritual search for enlightenment in ancient India still resonates today. Yet as we read the original Pali accounts through contemporary eyes, we are able to see Gotama, in Stephen Batchelor’s words, “as a human being, rather than a quasi-god.” Stephen’s libretto brings the ancient texts to life with Gotama’s struggle as a human being “who had lived and died on this same earth on which I also walk.” Likewise, the music for the Māra story is reflected through the lens of my own training in Western music and the Western culture that has shaped my own life. Through the use of Western dance forms, chorales, operatic ensembles, imitative counterpoint, and funeral marches the universal story of one man’s spiritual struggle comes to life in this chamber opera.

Because I am a lover of puzzles, the score is infused with musical references to past Western composers who wrote of death, the devil, temptation, and betrayal. In the opening scene, for example, Gotama riffs off the 1st cello’s melodic reference to the Ordo Virtutum by Hildegard of Bingen (1098 –1179), a morality play in which the Devil had a speaking part but did not sing. Māra’s imploring tune in Act 1, Scene 2 is set over the famous ground bass from Henry Purcell’s Dido’s Lament with its descending chromatic line, symbolic of death, that in a series of repeating notes implies a harmony that is stuck and unchanging. In Pali, Taṇhā (Māra’s daughter and the seductress in Act 1) whose name means “desire,” thus tangos, waltzes, and a tarantella pepper the score with the sensuality of dance.

Like many other composers before me, I have used the foreboding Latin Hymn Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) throughout the score, sometimes hidden within the harmony, at other times blatantly in the melody. Musical references can be as fleeting as a bit of motive referring to the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz to an inverted melody from Bizet’s Carmen. The calm instrumental pastorale in Act 1 becomes the underlying harmony for the impassioned, chaotic vocal trio that ends Act 1, Scene 2, reflecting the growing calm of Gotama versus the wrathful anger of Māra. Musical canons (melodies with one or more imitations) and even a fugue are found throughout Māra. What better response to Māra’s statement: “Let me attach myself to him like a shadow to its body, waiting for an opportunity to strike him down!” A funeral march in Act 2 sets the tone for the story’s outcome, and the opera ends with a tragic chorale sung by Ananda, Gotama’s loyal attendant.

Creative Team

Photograph of Sherry Woods

The music of SHERRY WOODS, D.M.A. (Composer) has been described as “beautiful
and riveting” (Charleston Post), and her string quartet Chambers written for the Ciompi quartet was called “a winner” that “swarmed with shimmering color and buzzing rhythms, fluttering and flitting in a busy rush” (Classical Voice of North Carolina). Sherry Woods’ music has been performed internationally, with performances in Thailand, Taiwan, and Kiev, and also in the United States, with performances from California to New York. She has been the winner of numerous awards, including the first prize Miriam Gideon Prize and the first prize Theodore Front Award in the New Music Search by the International Alliance of Women in Music. She received the Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from the University of South Carolina in 1997 in Composition and the Doctorate of Musical Arts degree in Viola Performance in 1991. Māra: A Chamber Opera was performed in a concert version at the Rubin Museum in New York City in 2017, and “The Buddha’s Death” (the final scene from Māra) was performed at the Music by Women Festival at the Mississippi University for Women on March 6, 2020. Visit her web page at SherryWoodsComposer.com.

Photograph of Stephen Batchelor

STEPHEN BATCHELOR (Libretto) is a writer and teacher known for his secular approach to Buddhism. Born in 1953, he was ordained as a Buddhist monk at the age of twenty and spent ten years training in the Tibetan Geluk and Korean Son orders. Since disrobing he has been engaged in a critical exploration of Buddhism’s role in the modern world, which has earned him both condemnation as a heretic and praise as a reformer. In particular, he regards Buddhism as an evolving culture of awakening, not a system of unchanging doctrines, and considers some traditional Buddhist concepts such as rebirth and karma to be relics of ancient Indian civilization rather than essential teachings. Since 1986, he has taught at Gaia House meditation center in Devon, England. In 2015 he co-founded Bodhi College, a European educational project dedicated to the understanding and application of early Buddhism. He is the author of the bestselling book Buddhism without Beliefs (Riverhead). His most recent publication is The Art of Solitude (Yale University Press). He travels worldwide to lecture and lead retreats and lives in southwest France with his wife, Martine. Visit his web page at StephenBatchelor.org.

Photograph of Benjamin Woods

BENJAMIN WOODS, D.M.A. (Music Director) performed his debut as a pianist in 1985 at Carnegie Hall, in New York City. He has presented numerous solo and chamber recitals at universities, concert series, and music festivals. Benjamin Woods has performed as a guest soloist with the Florence Symphony Orchestra, with the Florence Masterworks Chorus and Orchestra, with members of the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra, and with the South Carolina Philharmonic. The former conductor/music director of the Florence Symphony Orchestra, and presently a professor emeritus of music at Francis Marion University in Florence, SC, Benjamin Woods received the dual distinction of being named one of Francis Marion University’s Board of Trustees’ Research Scholars and the J. Lorin Mason Distinguished Professor for 2006–2007.

Photograph of Ronn Smith

RONN SMITH (Producer/Stage Director) is a Boston-based director, writer, and private consultant who has worked with a variety of theaters throughout New York and New England. Favorite productions include Sarah Ruhl’s The Oldest Boy (a benefit reading for Tibet House), Paula Vogel’s The Baltimore Waltz and The Mineola Twins, and Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie and Something Cloudy, Something Clear. He is the author of the play Nothing but the Truth, based on the YA novel by Avi. Mr. Smith also serves on the board of the Tennessee Williams Theater Festival (Provincetown, MA) and until recently on the boards of Barre Center for Buddhist Studies (Barre, MA) and Filmmakers Collaborative (Waltham, MA).

Production / Development History

October 24-29, 2016. Workshop, with two public performances Francis Marion University Performing Arts Center/Black Box Theatre, Florence, South Carolina.

October 18 & 20, 2017 Concert version (with revised score and seven-piece chamber orchestra). Rubin Museum of Art, New York City. Benjamin Woods, Music Director. Vocalists: Michael Sumuel sang the role of Gotama, Sam Levine sang Māra (Sunakkhatta and Cunda), and Rebecca Farley sang Taṇhā and Ānanda. The orchestra included John Romeri (flute), Erin Benim (violin), Kiku Enomoto (Viola 1), Katie Kresek (Viola 2), Adrienne Woods (Cello 1), Eleanor Norton (Cello 2), and Mat Fieldes (Bass). Running Time: Approximately 75-80 minutes. This YouTube.com video shows an excerpt, Act II Scene IV, with the chamber orchestra and the performers from the Rubin Museum performance in New York City, 2017. This performance was supported in part by The Rubin Museum and Tricycle Magazine.

March 5, 2020 Select scenes (with piano score). Unitarian Universalist, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Vocalists: Paul Bower, Cammy Cook, John Tiranno. Panel Moderator: Dr. Don Fineberg, M.D.

Articles & Videos

Stephen Batchelor. Māra: The Genesis of an Opera , Bodhi College, 28 February 2018.

Wendy Joan Biddlecombe. Māra the Opera, Tricycle, 20 October 2016.

Guilds of the Santa Fe Opera, Inc. Māra: A Chamber Opera . Announcement of panel discussion and three scenes to be performed by singers affiliated with various local opera companies, including The Santa Fe Opera. Opergram, March 2020, Volume 14, Issue 6.

Megan May. Woods family collaborates on opera . SCNow.com Morning News Oct 26, 2016.

News Journal, Florence. Sherry Woods’ chamber opera, Māra, to premiere here, FlorenceNewsJournal.com. Good life, News, Arts & Culture, Local News. Tuesday, 25 October 2016.

Noah Rasheta. Noah Rasheta interviews Stephen Batchelor on Secular Buddhism video. Includes discussion of Māra Opera as secular Buddhist art. Transcript, SecularBuddhistNetwork.org, Sep 13, 2017. Video, Secular Buddhism Youtube.com channel, Sep 13, 2017.

Rubin Museum of Art. Buddha, Māra, and the Question of Evil with Stephen Batchelor, TALK. RubinMuseum.org, August - October 2017.

Rubin Museum of Art. Māra: A Chamber Opera Libretto by Stephen Batchelor + Music by Sherry Woods RubinMuseum.org, August - October 2017.

Sherry Woods. Māra excerpt, Act II Scene IV. The video shows an excerpt with the chamber orchestra and the performers from the Rubin Museum performance in New York City, October 2017. Sherry Woods Youtube.com channel.

Wikipedia article Māra: a Chamber Opera.

Robert Wright. What comes after Buddhism? Robert Wright & Stephen Batchelor. In this video they discuss Mara and Buddha's ongoing relationship and how Stephen’s opera Māra came to fruition. The Wright Show, MeaningofLife.tv YouTube.com channel, Jan 22, 2018.

Contact

For further information about MĀRA: A CHAMBER OPERA and presenting the opera in a fully staged production, concert version, or as a digital film, please contact Ronn Smith, The Māra Project, at rsmith02130@yahoo.com. Score, libretto, audio recording, and audio clips available upon request.

Copyrights

Photo credit: Borobudur Temple © Stephen Batchelor.

Text Copyright © 2019 by The Māra Project. All Rights Reserved.

Libretto Copyright © 2018 by Stephen Batchelor. All Rights Reserved.

Music Copyright © 2018 by Sherry Woods. All Rights Reserved.