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Thread: How powerful is Maya? How much free will do we really have?

  1. #11

    Re: How powerful is Maya? How much free will do we really have?

    Namaste All,

    What a fantastic thread, I love to ponder the beauty of mAyA; her depth and creative power is really something!

    To my mind mAyA is comparable to potential difference, an electrical charge exists as a difference in levels, creating a voltage. Now how can this be like mAyA.

    I often think of birds when considering mAyA, if you will humour me for a while I shall start with us humans.
    We humans have had the same brains for at least 60000 years, now in a simpler age we had much less encumbrance, we did what we needed to survive and spent the rest of our free time, especially during periods of plenty, creating recreational pass times. All this to amuse our highly developed intellects. In many ways this was to continue to compete for status, both within the tribe and for the attention of the opposite sex.

    There was human mAyA at this time, but the potential difference was low. She grew thicker as we grew, becoming ever more intricate.
    Today's world, especially in the West has become over grown with different cascading repetitions of those same initial conditions of mAyA; so much so, that it has become increasingly thick, or highly charged, dare I say it exponentially so (nature loves natural logarithms!) , thus more difficult to separate the natural energies, from those unnecessary ones created as embellishments to our egos and intellect.

    In order to create further competition.

    To create competition; why is this so?

    I will return to my favourite analogy, that of humans and birds, we humans with our highly developed intellect resemble in many ways our dear winged cousins, the birds. Both humans and birds, have found evolutionary niches which have served to raise our status in the food chain.

    We have escaped our preadatosrs by out witting them and birds have escaped by flying (some by being large and putting their heads in the sand!). Now what to do with all this justly earned freedom?

    We have developed new and intricate ways of competing with each other! Somewhere along the line we grew to recognise both our selves and our status, becoming concious of this energy we deemed our selves to be "This" and thus we developed I ness....

    To my mind, this is mAyA at our human level.

    This shakti is a fractal boundary, and as such takes on a very different form at different scales.

    Just like this ...

    or this ...

    Has the jīvanmukti simply remembered a time when life was less complicated, pruning the energy of mAyA to make growth a more fruitful endeavour?

    praNAma

    mana
    Last edited by Mana; 19 April 2012 at 02:39 PM.

  2. #12
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    Re: How powerful is Maya? How much free will do we really have?

    hariḥ oṁ
    ~~~~~~

    namasté

    Quote Originally Posted by yajvan View Post
    If I say wind (vāyu) is a powerful force, I can measure it before and after one resides as the jīvanmukti; yet this is not so with māyā. What may we be missing? Are we framing this māyā correctly ?praṇām
    So , I have stirred the pot, and therefore responsible for giving some offer that may positively contribute to this overall conversation.

    Within the advaita tradition , (and hence we look to ādi śaṅkara-ji's¹ knowledge) this māyā is tightly coupled to avidyā and is considered inter-changable in their use. This couplet of māyā/avidyā has 6 marks or defining charactistics :
    • it is beginningless or anādi
    • it is terminiated by proper knowledge or jñāna-nivartya
    • it covers or veils or āvaraṇa & vikṣepa
    • it is indefinible or anivacanīya
    • it is the nature of existence or bhāvarūpa
    • it is neither located in the individual or in brahman
    If we look to ādi śaṅkara-ji's vivekacūḍāmaṇi¹ , 110th and 110 śloka-s addresses māyā and brings controversy to many a scholar/śāstṛi ( that would not be me). The 111th śloka informs us of the following as it discusses this māyā. It says,
    It is neither real or unreal or both; it is neither undifferentiated nor different nor both; it neither has parts nor is it partless nor both. It is supremely wonderful and of an inexpressible form.

    For me, it is quite important that it goes away with right knowledge... no different then a knot in a rope that goes away when it is un-tied.

    As for my views on this matter, I see it from a different point of view... I am grounded in the notion of apohana śakti the energy that 'strips off' or makes things appear as different between objects. This is called out in this post if there is interest: http://www.hindudharmaforums.com/showpost.php?p=82128&postcount=15

    This informs me that māyā is the 'sport' of this śakti and is the view we find in kaśmir śaivism.

    praṇām

    words

    ādi śaṅkara we know as śaṅkara bhagavatpāda.
      • ādi = first, beginning
      • śaṅkara = śaṃkara = causing prosperity , auspicious , beneficent. This is another name for śiva or rudra.
      • bhagavatpāda = Bhagavat+pāda bhagavat is glorious , illustrious , divine + pāda or pādāḥ is added to proper names or titles in token of respect.
      • With this case pāda it is then a ray or beam of light (considered as the foot of a heavenly body).
    • vivekacūḍāmaṇi - viveka= विवेक = the ability to discriminate, discrimination + cūḍāmaṇi चूडामणि = a crown jewel , or the crown jewl of discrimination ( some say crest jewel); this is a most profound great work of ādi śaṅkara.
    यतस्त्वं शिवसमोऽसि
    yatastvaṁ śivasamo'si
    because you are identical with śiva

    _

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