Maya (philosophy)

“ On the shores of the Mediterranean we find nations whose ancestors seem to have been intimate with the Mayas, for the names of their country, of their cities, and of their divinities can be traced to the Maya tongue. Furthermore, their traditions, customs, architecture, mode of dress, weapons, and even their alphabetical letters are like those of the Mayas. From records in stone and MSS. we learn something of the philosophy of the Maya sages; and the same ideas are found among nations living in Asia and Africa.
Nothing could be more significant than the universality of the word Maya. ”

“ The Maya believed in the immortality of the soul and in a spiritual life hereafter. As a man lived in this world so he was rewarded in the next. The good and righteous went to a heaven of material delights, a place where rich foods never failed and pain and sorrow were unknown. ”

“ Maya's heart yearned with a kindred pang. She, too, was orphaned in her soul, and she would gladly have lit the fire upon this lonely hearth, and companioned the solitude of the sleeper; but, alas! the boughs still wore their summer garland, and from each severed end slow tears of dryad-life distilled honeyedly upon the stone beneath. Of such withes and saplings comes no living fire! Maya, smiling, set a kiss upon the boy-sleeper's brow, but the Spark lay quiet, and the house-spirit flung a blooming cherry-bough after its departing guest. ”

“ This is the reason why the separateness of our self has been described by our philosophers as maya, as an illusion, because it has no intrinsic reality of its own. It looks perilous; it raises its isolation to a giddy height and casts a black shadow upon the fair face of existence; from the outside it has an aspect of a sudden disruption, rebellious and destructive; it is proud, domineering and wayward, it is ready to rob the world of all its wealth to gratify its craving of a moment ”

“ And supposing they see the body of a MAHATMA, how can they know that behind that mask is concealed an exalted entity? By what standard are they to judge whether the Maya before them reflects the image of a true MAHATMA or not? And who will say that the physical is not a Maya? Higher things can be perceived only by a sense pertaining to those higher things; whoever therefore wants to see the real MAHATMA, must use his intellectual sight. He must so elevate his Manas that its perception will be clear and all mists created by Maya be dispelled. ”

“ Le Plongeon has shown that in Yucatan and in Egypt the radical MA, of the word Maya, meant earth and place. This word was used by Hindoo sages to indicate matter, the earth, as it is found in their cosmogonic diagram. All matter being regarded as illusion, the word maya, in India, has that meaning. The mother of Buddha was Maya Devi (Beautiful Illusion) . Maya is matter, the feminine energy of Brahma. ”

“ My dear little Maya, there will be other things in your life—the sunshine, lofty green trees, flowery heaths, lakes of silver, rushing, glistening waterways, the heavens blue and radiant, and perhaps even human beings, the highest and most perfect of Nature’s creations. ”

“ Maya then is a paradox—real, yet not real, an illusion, yet not an illusion.
He who knows the Real sees in Maya not illusion, but reality. He who knows not the Real sees in Maya illusion and thinks it real. ”

“ Under the name of Maya, she is the mother of Agni—i.e., the principle of motherhood and creation simply, as which she is in the Rigveda at one time represented by the fire-producing wood, the soft pith, in which the fire-stick was whirled; at another as the earth, with which the sky has mated. ”

“ Similarly Maya is also personified as a Goddess that is represented throughout Dharmic Traditions in different forms and guises. Sometimes demonized, she fulfills her function and is to be honoured. For me Maya has always been somewhat denigrated and disfavored like Lucifer, the angel of light who fell. ”

“ The Maya conceived the earth to be a cube, which supported the celestial vase resting on its four legs, the four cardinal points. Out of this grew the Tree of Life, the flowers of which were the immortal principle of man, the soul. Above hung heavy clouds, the fructifying waters upon which all growth and life depend. ”

“ The king agreed, and brahmans familiar with the mystery of dreams were summoned to the palace. When they had heard Maya's story they spoke in this manner:
"A great joy is to be yours, O king, O queen. A son will be born to you, distinguished by the favor of the Gods. If, one day, he should renounce royalty, leave the palace, cast love aside; if, seized with compassion for the worlds, he should live the wandering life of a monk, he will deserve marvellous praise, he will richly deserve magnificent gifts. He will be adored by the worlds, for he will give them that which they hunger after. ”

“ We are incapable of apprehending a Personality, except in the sense of something that masks or represents an incomprehensible notion; and dogmatic systems are to us no more than the formal envelopes of spiritual truth.
Two cardinal ideas run through our deeper religious thought. One is the Maya, or cosmic illusion, which cuts the knot of any difficulty touching the relation between Spirit and Matter, and produces Unity by exhibiting the visible universe as a shadow projected upon the white radiance of eternity ”

“ So with scrip and hood she went out of the forest and begged of the world's bounty such life as a beggar-maid may endure.
Long ago the King and Queen died in Larrièrepensée, and there the Princess Maddala reigns with a goodly Prince beside her, nor cares for her lost sister; but songless, discrowned, desolate, Maya walks the earth.
All ye whose fires burn bright on the hearth, whose dwellings ring with child-laughter, or are hushed with love-whispers and the peace of home, pity the Princess Maya! Give her food and shelter; charm away the bitter flames that consume her life and soul ”

“ The Brahma-Maya is the life in nature, of which, Brahman (neuter) is the soul. The Brahma-Maya is that blind energy and force, potential and powerful, and eternally fecund, which is incessantly producing under forms which are without cessation renewed; and which is adored in India to-day, as the Great Mother, the Universal Mother, in other words all nature deified. Maya is the mother of Love or Desire, the first principle or affinity of all affection, creation, matter. ”

“ Francis said. “I noticed, all the way from the entrance, the steady inclined plane of the floors of the rooms and passages. Those old Mayas were engineers, and they built with an eye on drainage. See how the water rushes away out through the passage.—Well, old man, read your knots, where is the treasure?”
“Where is my son?” the old man counter-demanded in dull and hopeless tones. “Chia has slain my only born. For his mother I broke the Maya law and stained the pure Maya blood with the mongrel blood of a woman of the tierra caliente. ”

“ Writhing with anguish and contempt, she turned away from the wrought stone whose semblance had beguiled her to her mortal loss; and as she passed from the step, another hand lit a consuming blaze beneath her staff and scrip, sending a sword of flame after her to the threshold, and the house-spirit shrieked aloud, "Only stones together strike fire, Maya!"—while from the casement above looked forth two faces, false and fair, with eyes of azure ice, and disdainful smiles, and bound together by a curling serpent, that ringed itself in portentous symbol about their waists. ”

“ Religion was indeed the very fountain-head of their civilization, and on its rites and observances they lavished a devotion rarely equaled in the annals of man. To its great uplifting force was due the conception and evolution of the hieroglyphic writing and calendar, alike the invention and the exclusive property of the priesthood. To its need for sanctuary may be attributed the origin of Maya architecture; to its desire for expression, the rise of Maya sculpture. ”

“ But Maya? Ah! well was she called Maya--the woman prolific of deceit and illusion, of whom the pundits spoke; woman, not content with being the child-bringer, but seeking---- Saraswati's large, capable hands closed in upon themselves tightly. She did not need to peer through the plaited chinks to know the scene within. She saw it burnt in upon her slow, constant brain. The tall bearded man of her own age--her own type--her kinsman--the patient, kindly husband of her youth ”

“ The tale was told to bring home to the growing children some moral maxim like truthfulness, fidelity to a pledge once given, conjugal happiness, and respect for parents. In this manner the children in the most ignorant homes become familiar with the ethical teachings of their nation and with the hypotheses underlying their respective religions. Almost everyone in India down to the most ignorant countrywoman understands the subtle meaning of such intricate Hindu doctrines as the laws of Karma, the theory of reincarnation, and the philosophy of Maya. ”

“ Evolution is in nature, not in the soul—evolution of nature, manifestation of the soul.
Maya is not illusion as it is popularly interpreted. Maya is real, yet it is not real. It is real in that the Real is behind it and gives it its 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, but is dependent upon the Real for its existence. ”

“ The Princess Maya despaired of home. The earth seemed a harsh stepmother, and its children rather stones than clay. A vague sense of some fearful barrier between herself and her kind haunted the woman's soul within her, and the unquenchable flames of the Spark seemed to girdle her with a defence that drove away even friendly ingress. ”

“ To tear the veil of maya is to pierce the secret of creation. The yogi who thus denudes the universe is the only true monotheist. All others are worshiping heathen images. So long as man remains subject to the dualistic delusions of nature, the Janus-faced Maya is his goddess; he cannot know the one true God.
The world illusion, maya, is individually called avidya, literally, “not-knowledge,” ignorance, delusion. Maya or avidya can never be destroyed through intellectual conviction or analysis, but solely through attaining the interior state of nirbikalpa samadhi. ”

“ And approaching, they fell at his feet with their followers, in order; then the hermit gave them the customary blessing, and after making them sit down, out of delight at their [432] arrival said to them—“I am exceedingly glad that I have beheld all you my sons; thou art to be praised, Maya, who, without diverging from the good path, art a treasure-house of all sciences; and thou art fortunate, Sunítha, who hast recovered thy life though lost, and thou, O Súryaprabha, art fortunate, who art destined to be the king of the sky-goers. ”

“ The neutral tint is better adapted to the sister in whose eyes all things are Maya — illusion. The shimmer of pearl belongs of right to her whose soul reflects the colour and quiet radiance of a thousand dreams. Compassion urged the one, the love of harmony led the other. ”

“ Not for our use is that intricate mind which in logic needs more than two premises to a conclusion, and in art is intolerant of all void space, entangling its figures in labyrinths of ornament which Maya herself might have devised to distract the sight from truth.
The Hindu has the true dignity of contemplation, and superbly removes himself from the sordid greeds of life. But in imagining and reviling an abstraction called Matter, he abides in the errors of the first Greek sages, and mines so far beneath the trodden earth that when he looks up into middle day he sees only the stars above him. ”

“ Opposing each other we behold on the one hand the deities of the sun, the gods of warmth and light, of civilisation and the joy of life, and on the other the deities of darksome death, of night, gloom, and fear. From these primal conceptions of light and darkness all the mythologic forms of the Maya are evolved. When we catch the first recorded glimpses of Maya belief we recognise that at the period when it came under the purview of Europeans the gods of darkness were in the ascendant and a deep pessimism had spread over Maya thought and theology. ”

“ Although the deities above described represent only a small fraction of the Maya pantheon, they include, beyond all doubt, its most important members, the truly great, who held the powers of life and death, peace and war, plenty and famine—who were, in short, the arbiters of human destiny. ”

“ CHAPTER XIV. I cannot look back on the days that followed our find of the Maya treasure without a mental shudder. It was as if the gods had put a curse upon us that was executed by nature herself. We started at dawn and had not reached the first edge of the jungle before one of the pack mules was bitten by a snake so venomous that within an hour the poor beast died despite all our efforts to save it. ”

“ And surely in these tender ones the Lord beheld the likeness of his mother, of whom it was said, “Joyful and reverenced of all, even as the young moon, strong and calm of purpose as the earth, pure of heart as the lotus, was Maya the Great Lady.” And of these women many became nuns and teachers, and not a few attained unto the Perfect Enlightenment passing even in this life into that Nirvana wherein are no more birth and death. ”

“ Maya means the delusive shows which spirit assumes. For there is nothing but spirit; which neither creates nor is created, neither acts nor suffers, which cannot change, and into which all souls are absorbed when they free themselves by meditation from the belief that they suffer or are happy, that they can experience either pleasure or pain. The next step is to polytheism. For if God neither creates nor destroys, but only seems to create and destroy, these appearances are not united together as being the acts of one Being, but are separate, independent phenomena. ”