MAYA: The illusion of Life

clever_goldfish_shark_400_wht_9243 Our Internet access has been poor and intermittent, so I could not post this when I actually wrote it. We are sitting in India at a friend’s place with me struggling to catch up on emails and my son trying to catch up with his school homework.

Suddenly, my 14-year-old son looks at me and says, “Papa, the world should have ended last night according to the Mayan calendar.”

Now that we have survived the end of the world, I wanted to take this opportunity to share my feelings about the root word Maya.

For some odd reason, I have been fascinated by the word Maya, which in Sanskrit means “illusion” for decades. I liked it so much that I wanted to name our daughter Maya, but my wife would not allow it as she thought the meaning was unclear.

Certain traditions believe that all of life is a Maya. My personal opinion tends to associate with that perspective, especially in terms of the power of our mind to create any realities that we believe. Have you noticed how we can always find evidence to support our stance, no matter what it is. Only after spending years writing my book and living it, I have realized the significance of the word and the reason for my infatuation with it.

Another school of thought supposes that all of reality exists only in language, which in my opinion further helps with the conjuring of an image or a scenario by our mind. Our mind’s ability to fabricate any internal reality is simply amazing.

I have been dealing with my mother who is suffering with Alzheimer’s and find myself fairly exhausted at the end of each day. When I put my head on the pillow to go to bed, my mind is racing with all kinds of thoughts that have been created through the various exchanges during the day. At the end of the day, the only way that I can calm myself is by realizing that all of them are just thoughts.

Please don’t let thoughts define you; they are merely thoughts. They come and they go. We are thought generating machines, creating Maya for one and all.

Season’s Greetings, Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!

Krishna

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Discussion

Joe Stafura December 25, 2012

Being involved in language technologies this post is of particular interest, the definition of Maya as the outcome of a flawed perspective is a great way to look at the genesis of poor decisions. While the definition of Maya can been compiled into a meaning of Illusion the core roots means ” not that”. And as you have mentioned, our brains have evolved to be Thought generating machines, the same mechanism that propels us forward is also responsible for the things that can set us back, studies have shown we “zone out” into self constructed fictions over 14,000 times per day.

Seeing the difference between the reality we want vs. the one we have is painful at times, but seeing what is leads us to the best decisions, allowing us to see “that” which is true and ignore the attractive “not that’s” that tell us what we want to hear or see.

The “location” from which your mind begins this journey is a major factor in what plot lines are available to you, this makes things hard when dealing with intractable problems such as those affecting your Mother.

Best of wishes for the strength and wisdom to help guide you through this Krishna, safe travels of all types.

Respectfully….Joe

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Nagaraj December 27, 2012

I believe the entire Theory of relativity is about Maya. The reality is what you believe you see according to your own inertial frame of reference. The same event is perceived differently by someone on a different referential frame, so there is no such thing as “universal” truth.

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