In Buddhism, Mara is said to be the god of love. One of the most celebrated scenes in the mythic history of Buddha is that Mara tried to tempt Gautam Buddha under Bodhi tree. Mara at first tried to frighten Buddha by legions of armed warriors. But he failed and tried to seduce him by his daughters, the Apsarasas.

Buddha however endured both temptations with unruffled equanimity, and eventually Mara, the tempter retired utterly baffled.

Mara is said to be located in the sixth or highest heaven, and has more or less influence over all the beings beneath him. He is a tempter, distracting humans from practicing the spiritual life by making the mundane alluring or the negative seem positive.

In the Buddhist culture, there are four senses of the word "Mara". First is the Klesa-mara, or Mara as the embodiment of all unskillful emotions. Second is the Mrtyu-mara, or Mara as death, in the sense of the ceaseless round of birth and death. Third is the Skandha-mara, or Mara as metaphor for the entirety of conditioned existence. Lastly is the Devaputra-mara, or Mara the son of a Deva (god), that is, Mara as an objectively existent being rather than as a metaphor.

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