Maya meaning

Maya is a Sanskrit word most often translated as illusion. Its older meaning is a power: the skill of a magician, or of a god, to make something appear in a form it does not really have.

In Indian philosophy the word grew from that sense of magic into a way of explaining why the world looks the way it does. Different traditions use it in quite different ways.

Where does the word maya come from?

It is usually traced to the root ma, to measure or to form. In the Rig Veda, maya means a wondrous or cunning power. One hymn says that Indra, by his mayas, goes about in many forms. Demons have maya too, in the sense of trickery.

The Shvetashvatara Upanishad, one of the later Upanishads, takes a step toward the philosophical meaning. It says that nature, prakriti, should be known as maya, and the great lord as the one who wields it.

How does Vedanta explain maya?

The idea is best known from Advaita Vedanta, the non-dual school associated with Shankara, usually dated to the eighth century CE. For Advaita, only brahman, the ground of everything, pure undivided consciousness, is ultimately real. Maya is what makes that one reality appear as many separate people and things.

The classic image is a rope seen as a snake in poor light. The fear is real while it lasts, but when the light comes the snake was never there. In the same way, the texts say, knowledge dissolves the mistaken sense of separation. This path of knowledge is jnana yoga, described in the guide to the yoga of knowledge.

Other Vedanta schools, such as those of Ramanuja and Madhva, read maya very differently and regard the world as real, created by the divine.

What does the Bhagavad Gita say about maya?

In the seventh chapter Krishna calls maya his divine power, made of the three gunas, the qualities of nature, and says it is hard to cross, though those who turn to him go beyond it. Here maya is less a mistake of perception than a power of the divine that both creates and conceals. You can read more about the text on the page about the Bhagavad Gita and yoga.

Do Buddhist and Jain traditions use the word?

Yes, in their own ways. Mahayana Buddhist texts often compare all things to a magical illusion. The Diamond Sutra ends by likening everything conditioned to a dream, an illusion, a bubble and a shadow, and it became a favourite text of Zen, the meditation school of China and Japan. These texts do not posit a single brahman behind the appearance; the point is that things lack a fixed essence of their own. Maya is also the name of the Buddha’s mother in the stories of his birth.

In Jainism the word has an ethical meaning. Maya is deceit, one of the four passions, the kashayas, along with anger, pride and greed, which Jain teaching says bind the soul to karma, the weight of past action.

What other images do the texts use for maya?

The rope and the snake is the most famous, but Vedanta teachers use several others, each showing a slightly different side of the idea.

• Shell and silver. Mother-of-pearl glinting on a beach is taken for silver. Desire makes the mistake: you see what you want to see.
• The dream. While it lasts, a dream feels completely real. Only on waking do you see it for what it was.
• The magic show. A conjuror makes an elephant appear. The audience is fooled; the conjuror is not. This image goes back to the oldest meaning of maya as a magician’s skill.
• Clay and pots. Pots, cups and jars have many names and shapes, but all of them are clay. The forms are real as forms, while the clay is what they really are.

How is maya different from avidya and lila?

These three words often appear together, and they are easy to blur.

One rough way to hold them together: maya is the show, avidya is being taken in by it, and lila is seeing the show as play.

Does maya have other meanings in English?

Yes. Maya is a popular given name in many languages, with separate roots in some of them. The Maya people of Mexico and Central America, and their civilisation, share the spelling but have no connection with the Sanskrit word.

How does maya show up in a modern yoga class?

Seldom by name. When it does, it is usually in a reminder that thoughts are not facts, or that the story you tell about a pose is not the pose itself. That is a light, practical echo of the old idea.

The deeper aim of the traditions, freedom from mistaken views, is called moksha, liberation, and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras use their own word for the root problem, avidya, ignorance. The Sanskrit yoga glossary explains other terms you may meet.