Māyā

Māyā.
1. The mother of Gotama who became the Buddha. She died within a few days of his birth. Later accounts (e.g. Buddhacarita) recount many miracles, including a virgin birth.

2. (Skt., ‘supernatural power’). In the early Vedic literature, māyā generally means supernatural power or magic. It also carries the connotation of deceit or trickery. In the Bhagavad-gītā, māyā is the power to bring things into apparent form.

In Advaita Vedānta philosophy, Gauḍapāda used the term māyā for the power of the apparent creation of the world as well as the world so created. Śaṅkara extended the term by associating it with avidyā (ignorance). For Śaṅkara, avidyā, ignorance of the Ultimate Reality (Brahman) produces the illusory world of name and form, or māyā, through superimposition. It is usually misleading to translate māyā as ‘illusion’. Nevertheless, soteriologically the power of māyā is wisely treated as such; and in later Hinduism, māyā as Cosmic Illusion is sometimes personified and identified with the great goddess Durgā.

In Mahāyāna Buddhism, māyā means a delusion or an illusion such as that produced by a magician. The phenomenal world is illusory, māyā, with the Mādhyamaka arguing that the separate dharmas themselves are conditioned and have no being of their own, and the Yogācāra/Vijñānavāda school regarding the dharmas as merely ideas or representations.

Among Sikhs, the teaching of the Gurūs is that māyā is a real part of God's creation. However, the attractions of māyā (i.e., wealth, physical love, etc.) are also, in the end, delusory and cannot accompany a person beyond death.