Foundations of Spirituality
This Is How to Understand “Reality Is an Illusion”
[Updated Feb 23, 2023] A clay pot points us to the spiritual reality of existence.
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“Maya” is the Sanskrit word that is usually translated as “illusion”. But it has many other nuanced definitions (see the Wikipedia entry on Maya).
It originally meant “magic”, as in “the magic of the universe (or gods) to create all we experience”. In the Hindu Upanishads, Maya was the opposite of Brahman, which is the unchanging absolute, both containing and beyond all objects and time. Thus, Maya is the reality of forms/objects and time (past, present, future) that is in constant change, and which we consider normal experience.
Both Hinduism and Buddhism teach that everything we think is “real” is actually “unreal”. That is because everything in our experience appears separate from us and from each other. That separation is an illusion. In truth, reality is only one thing. And that one thing is the only “real” thing.
Many describe what we perceive as a veil that hides the absolute truth.
