Someone asked: how are the five hindrances related to the five armies of Māra? The five armies consist of the māra of the aggregates, the māra of death, the deva-son māra, the māra of volitional formations, and the defilement-māra.

The hindrances belong to the defilement-māra — they are mental factors of an unwholesome mind. A mental factor (cetasika) is the mood or emotional quality of the mind. When an unwholesome mind arises, we hear an inner voice inciting us to act one way or another — but a guiding voice alone isn't enough; an accompanying emotion is needed for us to actually act on it. A friend might egg us on to be angry at someone, but if we hold no anger ourselves, we won't get angry. A young man seeing a young woman needs an accompanying feeling of lust for desire to arise; without it, it's simply seeing. Emotion is what binds the mind. A wholesome mind likewise needs wholesome mental factors as its connecting emotion — wanting to do good; without a guiding feeling to do good, we remain indifferent, unmoved to act.

The hindrances are thus mental factors of the unwholesome mind, used to disturb humans and all beings so that doing good becomes difficult. Wanting to meditate, delight in sights, tastes, smells, and sounds intrudes; wanting to cultivate loving-kindness, irritation and resentment intrude; wanting to give or keep precepts, greed, possessiveness, and fear of running short intrude, blocking any wish to give. The five hindrances are thus tools of the unwholesome mind. As for the defilement-māra, when the māra-mind takes possession, it comes together with its own body, feeling, mind, and dhamma, manifesting as a hell-being, an asura, or an animal overlaid within us — depending on how low the wave of the mind sinks at that moment.

This mental factor functions to stir up craving — sensual craving, craving for existence, or craving for non-existence — stirring it up in order to produce clinging, which drives the decision to act on the unwholesome's guidance, using the hindrances as its tools: sensual desire, drowsiness, ill-will, restlessness, or doubt — all tools the unwholesome uses to disturb us, creating confusion and turmoil within the mind. Mind and mental factor both arise within the mind; the māra-mind and its unwholesome mental factors are what stir up craving to produce the clinging that drives us to act. Once decided, we must cling firmly to see the act through, with the māra's mind and mental factors as the force compelling us to complete it, using the hindrances to keep the strength for wholesome action from ever growing strong. The greater the power of the hindrances, the more the roots of the unwholesome can use it to press us further down.

Once craving has been stirred up by the hindrances, it leads to a decision to act as the unwholesome directs. Birth, aging, and death — appearing as black particles — fragment into atomic specks surrounding us; the darker this becomes, depending on the thickness of the defilement, the lower the mind sinks. A body within the body then appears — as a hell-being, an asura, or an animal — depending on which realm that dark particle belongs to, visible only through the dhamma-eye of the Dhammakāya, not through the physical eye (as taught by the Master, Luang Phaw Dhammajayo). This body-within-a-body draws in a continuous flow of demerit-energy while the wrongful, immoral act is being carried out, until the act is completed, yielding its reward: a completed blueprint on the side of demerit. All of this becomes sealed into a completed sphere of demerit, made of dark, defiled energy suffused with suffering, along with a sphere of ruin even darker than the sphere of demerit, set to destroy one's fortune according to that blueprint. All of it is then stored within the sphere of dhamma in the human body, awaiting its placement on the timeline of the future — the near future being this very life, the distant future being lives to come.