I’ve been asked what Maya is: Maya means illusion. In Pali, the language of many of the earliest Buddhist texts, the word is moha, or “delusion.”

In other words, Maya is the play of life where we believe that we are separate entities and objects, careening around a dangerous world. Otherness. Whenever we slip into otherness, that is what is reflected back to us, and we suffer. When we merge with what is without resistance, not-two-ness is reflected back–and along with that, more ease.

Awareness receives and holds it all, without preference.

It’s our apparent choice: otherness or not.

© Amrita Skye Blaine, 2012