For as long as i have been in contact with the Oriental philosophy, the one concept that has baffled me the most is the concept called Maya
When i first came in contact with the works and teachings of Vivekananda, which was around 13 years back, the same concept and its very succinct allegorical commentary given by the Swami left me with many sleepless nights. But the shortcoming was in my understanding, not his commentary. As I was mentioning the same to my close friend Abi the other day : "Swami's words are like words of an NCERT book, you need a guide to make the meaning lucid".
The same guide dawned to me in forms of the following excerpt from an enlightening work of truthful art called "The Voice of Baba ji". I am here by quoting them as is for others to experience.
"The world of maya, when analyzed resolves itself into names, and forms, nama rupa. It is a combination of the three categories desa, kala and nimmita, space, time and cause, which are themselves reducible to nama rupa, which constitutes the universe. Apart from the ocean, there is no wave. Remove the name and form of the wave, there is ocean alone. So, this maya is what makes the difference between me and you, between all animals and man, between gods and men. In fact, it is this maya that causes the Atman to be caught, as it were, in so many millions of beings and these are distinguishable only through name and form. If you leave it alone, let name and form go, all this variety vanishes forever and you are what you really are.
This is maya.
The Advaitin speaks of the world as illusory and refers to maya as the principle of illusion. But there is a popular sense in which the term illusion is used, which does not suit the advaita view of maya. Swami Vivekananda warns against the interpretation of maya as illusion in this sense. In one of his London lectures he says: "Most of you are by this time familiar with the idea of maya and know that it is sometimes erroneously explained as illusion, so that when the universe is said to be maya, that also has to be explained as being illusion. The translation of the word is neither happy nor correct." It should be noted, however, that the Swami is against a particular sense in which the term "illusion" is used and not against the expression as such. For he himself uses the term in several places, but after making its legitimate meaning clear. "Illusion," he says in one place, "is taking the real for the unreal, not nothing at all"."
Maya is not illusion, as it is popularly interpreted. It is not nothing at all. In other words, maya does not signify a substractless illusion or sunya, as in nihilistic Buddhism. But in the sense of taking the real for the unreal and vice versa, coupling the true and the untrue, maya is illusion. Maya is real, yet it is not real. It is real in that the real is behind it and gives it an appearance of reality. That which is real in maya is the reality in and through maya. Yet the reality is never seen, and hence, that which is seen is unreal and it has no real independent existence of itself. It is dependent upon the real for its existence.
A host of question is usually raised with reference to the ontological status of maya, the how and why of it. What is maya? Is it identical with or different from Brahman? If it is identical, the evil and ignorance of the world of maya will belong to Brahman. If it is different, there will be duality. Where does maya reside? Not in Brahman, because Brahman is self-luminous and ignorance cannot reside in it, nor can the individual soul, because the individual is a product of maya. What is the content of maya? This again cannot be the Self for the Self is intelligence. Was there a beginning to maya? What was before it? How did it come into being and why? These are some of the questions which are invariably asked, concerning maya. Some of them are due to a misunderstanding and the others are illogical. Because maya is a fact we experience, we call it a positive entity. Because no beginning can be assigned to it, all beginning being in it, we say it is beginning-less. Because it cannot be pigeonholed into any category of understanding, such as existence, non-existence, real, unreal etc., we regard it as indeterminable. And so, all the difficulties that maya raises in our intellect, constitute an ornament to it and not a defect in it.
If maya were explicable in terms of our categories, it would cease to be maya. Only if maya was real, the non-duality of Brahman would be destroyed. But maya is not real, and so Brahman nature is not affected. It is the same Brahman, which appears as the world of maya. Somehow the distinctions appear. We cannot say how. Constituted as we are, as individual souls, we are aware of ignorance. This experience itself shows that ignorance is not final, and therefore not real. If a locus and a content are to be assigned, it must be the self alone, since there is nothing else besides it.
As for the questions of how and why, they are illogical. The how, refers to the mechanical causation, and the why, to the teleological. Causation is within maya. Therefore there can be no cause of maya. The question, what is the cause of maya, illusion, has been asked for the last three thousand years and the only answer is that when the world is able to formulate a logical question, we shall answer it. The question contains a self-contradiction. It would mean, what caused the uncaused, what conditioned the unconditioned? The truth is that the very concept of causation is phenomenal. It does not apply to Reality. Similarly, the question, why, is illogical. To ask why maya came is a useless question, because the answer can never be given in maya and beyond maya who will ask it?
Evil creates why, not why the evil. It is evil that asks why. Illusion destroys illusion. Reason itself, being based upon contradiction, is a circle and has to kill itself. All questions are in maya. Beyond maya there is no question, at all. All that we can know, and need to know is that we can get beyond maya, i.e., know that there is no maya at all in reality. It is only so long as we hold onto maya, as if it were something real, that it can bind us. If we let go of it and witness it only, then we can admire the picture of the universe undisturbed. The teaching about maya is not to make us clever about it, but to enable us to know that we are the non-dual self and not the helpless creatures of circumstances, we imagine ourselves to be. This seems to be the prominent note struck by the Swami in his discourses on the Vedanta. It has the merit of conformity with the exposition of the doctrine by the classical Advaitins, but also of simplicity and clarity, which must appeal to the modern mind."
More will be added in relation to the same topic in due time, if divinity permits...
When i first came in contact with the works and teachings of Vivekananda, which was around 13 years back, the same concept and its very succinct allegorical commentary given by the Swami left me with many sleepless nights. But the shortcoming was in my understanding, not his commentary. As I was mentioning the same to my close friend Abi the other day : "Swami's words are like words of an NCERT book, you need a guide to make the meaning lucid".
The same guide dawned to me in forms of the following excerpt from an enlightening work of truthful art called "The Voice of Baba ji". I am here by quoting them as is for others to experience.
"The world of maya, when analyzed resolves itself into names, and forms, nama rupa. It is a combination of the three categories desa, kala and nimmita, space, time and cause, which are themselves reducible to nama rupa, which constitutes the universe. Apart from the ocean, there is no wave. Remove the name and form of the wave, there is ocean alone. So, this maya is what makes the difference between me and you, between all animals and man, between gods and men. In fact, it is this maya that causes the Atman to be caught, as it were, in so many millions of beings and these are distinguishable only through name and form. If you leave it alone, let name and form go, all this variety vanishes forever and you are what you really are.
This is maya.
The Advaitin speaks of the world as illusory and refers to maya as the principle of illusion. But there is a popular sense in which the term illusion is used, which does not suit the advaita view of maya. Swami Vivekananda warns against the interpretation of maya as illusion in this sense. In one of his London lectures he says: "Most of you are by this time familiar with the idea of maya and know that it is sometimes erroneously explained as illusion, so that when the universe is said to be maya, that also has to be explained as being illusion. The translation of the word is neither happy nor correct." It should be noted, however, that the Swami is against a particular sense in which the term "illusion" is used and not against the expression as such. For he himself uses the term in several places, but after making its legitimate meaning clear. "Illusion," he says in one place, "is taking the real for the unreal, not nothing at all"."
Maya is not illusion, as it is popularly interpreted. It is not nothing at all. In other words, maya does not signify a substractless illusion or sunya, as in nihilistic Buddhism. But in the sense of taking the real for the unreal and vice versa, coupling the true and the untrue, maya is illusion. Maya is real, yet it is not real. It is real in that the real is behind it and gives it an appearance of reality. That which is real in maya is the reality in and through maya. Yet the reality is never seen, and hence, that which is seen is unreal and it has no real independent existence of itself. It is dependent upon the real for its existence.
A host of question is usually raised with reference to the ontological status of maya, the how and why of it. What is maya? Is it identical with or different from Brahman? If it is identical, the evil and ignorance of the world of maya will belong to Brahman. If it is different, there will be duality. Where does maya reside? Not in Brahman, because Brahman is self-luminous and ignorance cannot reside in it, nor can the individual soul, because the individual is a product of maya. What is the content of maya? This again cannot be the Self for the Self is intelligence. Was there a beginning to maya? What was before it? How did it come into being and why? These are some of the questions which are invariably asked, concerning maya. Some of them are due to a misunderstanding and the others are illogical. Because maya is a fact we experience, we call it a positive entity. Because no beginning can be assigned to it, all beginning being in it, we say it is beginning-less. Because it cannot be pigeonholed into any category of understanding, such as existence, non-existence, real, unreal etc., we regard it as indeterminable. And so, all the difficulties that maya raises in our intellect, constitute an ornament to it and not a defect in it.
If maya were explicable in terms of our categories, it would cease to be maya. Only if maya was real, the non-duality of Brahman would be destroyed. But maya is not real, and so Brahman nature is not affected. It is the same Brahman, which appears as the world of maya. Somehow the distinctions appear. We cannot say how. Constituted as we are, as individual souls, we are aware of ignorance. This experience itself shows that ignorance is not final, and therefore not real. If a locus and a content are to be assigned, it must be the self alone, since there is nothing else besides it.
As for the questions of how and why, they are illogical. The how, refers to the mechanical causation, and the why, to the teleological. Causation is within maya. Therefore there can be no cause of maya. The question, what is the cause of maya, illusion, has been asked for the last three thousand years and the only answer is that when the world is able to formulate a logical question, we shall answer it. The question contains a self-contradiction. It would mean, what caused the uncaused, what conditioned the unconditioned? The truth is that the very concept of causation is phenomenal. It does not apply to Reality. Similarly, the question, why, is illogical. To ask why maya came is a useless question, because the answer can never be given in maya and beyond maya who will ask it?
Evil creates why, not why the evil. It is evil that asks why. Illusion destroys illusion. Reason itself, being based upon contradiction, is a circle and has to kill itself. All questions are in maya. Beyond maya there is no question, at all. All that we can know, and need to know is that we can get beyond maya, i.e., know that there is no maya at all in reality. It is only so long as we hold onto maya, as if it were something real, that it can bind us. If we let go of it and witness it only, then we can admire the picture of the universe undisturbed. The teaching about maya is not to make us clever about it, but to enable us to know that we are the non-dual self and not the helpless creatures of circumstances, we imagine ourselves to be. This seems to be the prominent note struck by the Swami in his discourses on the Vedanta. It has the merit of conformity with the exposition of the doctrine by the classical Advaitins, but also of simplicity and clarity, which must appeal to the modern mind."
More will be added in relation to the same topic in due time, if divinity permits...
Comments
But in reality the path to the real source of light can be discovered if we clearly understand that there exist a screen which is not an illusion but a pre-designed entity with no real light of itself but lighted for the fat that the real source makes it enlightened. The creation of maya is just like that. Its creation is for the sheer fact of our understanding and discovery of the path to the reality behind it the source. But we like for being lighted by the light of maya (the screen) holds on to it and seldom try to pave the path which is the reality and lies behind it.
Great compilation bro.