MAYA AND ILLUSION

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Posted by: " Uttishthata " uttishthata

Wed Nov 14, 2007 7:00 pm (PST)

MAYA AND ILLUSION - Swam Vivekananda

 

Thus we find that Maya is not a theory for the explanation of the

world; it is simply a statement of facts as they exist, that the

very basis of our being is contradiction, that wherever there is

good, there must also be evil, and wherever there is evil, there

must be some good, wherever there is life, death must follow as its

shadow, and everyone who smiles will have to weep, and vice versa.

Nor can this state of things be remedied. We may verily imagine that

there will be a place where there will be only good and no evil,

where we shall only smile and never weep. This is impossible in the

nature of things; for the conditions will remain the same. Wherever

there is the power of producing a smile in us, there lurks the power

of producing tears. Wherever there is the power of producing

happiness, there lurks somewhere the power of making us miserable.

 

Thus the Vedanta philosophy is neither optimistic nor pessimistic.

It voices both these views and takes things as they are. It admits

that this world is a mixture of good and evil, happiness and misery,

and that to increase the one, one must of necessity increase the

other. There will never be a perfectly good or bad world, because

the very idea is a contradiction in terms. The great secret revealed

by this analysis is that good and bad are not two cut-and-dried,

separate existences. There is not one thing in this world of ours

which you can label as good and good alone, and there is not one

thing in the universe which you can label as bad and bad alone. The

very same phenomenon which is appearing to be good now, may appear

to be bad tomorrow. The same thing which is producing misery in one,

may produce happiness in another. The fire that burns the child, may

cook a good meal for a starving man. The same nerves that carry the

sensations of misery carry also the sensations of happiness. The

only way to stop evil, therefore, is to stop good also; there is no

other way. To stop death, we shall have to stop life also. Life

without death and happiness without misery are contradictions, and

neither can be found alone, because each of them is but a different

manifestation of the same thing. What I thought to be good

yesterday, I do not think to be good now. When I look back upon my

life and see what were my ideals at different times, I find this to

be so. At one time my ideal was to drive a strong pair of horses; at

another time I thought, if I could make a certain kind of sweetmeat,

I should be perfectly happy; later I imagined that I should be

entirely satisfied if I had a wife and children and plenty of money.

Today I laugh at all these ideals as mere childish nonsense.

 

to be continued...

 

The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda Volume 2 [ Page : 97]

(Lecture Delivered in London)

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QUOTE OF THE DAY:

That which is nearest is least observed. The Atman is the nearest of

the near, therefore the careless and the unsteady mind gets no clue

to it. But the person who is alert, calm, self-restrained, and

discriminating ignores the external world and, diving more and more

into the inner world, realizes the glory of the Atman and becomes

great.

- Swami Vivekananda