The Battle With Maara -- Lord Of The Dead
This great bodhisattva, having made his renunciation, becoming a bhikkhu observing `siila, bathing in the river to cool his body, eating delicious milk-rice cooked in heavenly juices by his [former] queen Chandramukhii, sending his alms-bowl upstream to the abode of the naagas, sojourning for a day amidst festivities and offerings along a path prepared by attendant devas and brahmaas from the ten thousand universes, taking eight handfuls of arrow grass offered by a devotee, will approach his Naaga 'Srii Bodhi from the right side, circumambulate the tree three times in pradak.si.naa fashion [a clockwise circumambulation of a sacred object), examine the ground and spreading grass on that unconquerable spot, sit on the special seat of victory which will spontaneously spring up from the earth, place his back against the trunk of that bodhi (tree), and will await on that Diamond throne (vajraasana) in fourfold determination. At that moment, Vasavarti Maara, living in his abode and knowing that the bodhisattva awaits in four-fold determination to become a buddha, will think thus: 'I will not allow him to become a buddha; I will throw him out of the universe taking him by his legs.'
Followed by his maara forces (the Dasabimbaras -- who are ten times heavier than the earth) fierce and dangerous as they descend to the threshold of the universe, Maara will crane his neck to see but will fail even to approach Bodhisattva Maitreya, whose face is the symbol of compassion, and will beat a path backward in retreat. At this time, the sun, fifty yojanas in size, will shine its thousands of rays on the 'mountain of setting' like a great wheel being drowned in the ocean; meanwhile, the moon, forty-nine yojanas in size, will rise up out of the east as if to bathe the whole world in a milky ocean.
