Maya — only recently have I learned her name — is my mistress. Though I have known her all my life, I have just started to see her more clearly.
I have become enmeshed with Maya, same as everyone who meets her, really. I am enchanted by her beauty, awed by her elegance. Maya teaches me, helps me make sense of life. Maya is my drug of choice, kind of like caffiene, which helps me function in the everyday world with its profanity and rudeness. She seduces me effortlessly and I come to her more often than I know I should, often late at night or as a refuge in moments of weakness.
I allow myself the conceit that I am among the more adept of her many suitors. I believe I can coax out her secrets, bend her and use her for my purposes. But, make no mistake, I am often at her mercy, doing her bidding. She is truly a high-maintainence mistress.
I wear her like a cloak, sometimes like a suit of armor, often like a veil. She weighs me down, wearies and frustrates me, misleads me, confuses me. She obscures my vision - tricks me into thinking I am truly wise.
Maya makes me think that I cannot survive apart from her. And maybe I can’t, but I can start to see through some of her lies.
Maya, you see, is illusion. Her name is a Hindu word for the “idle veil” which clouds our awareness of the true nature of reality. Maya is the world of words, theories, propositions, truths, conventions, laws, definitions, instrumentalities, and metal models. Maya enables us to articulate and organize life as we experience it into convenient groupings for easy digestion. Through Maya we impose our ideas upon reality by classifying, measuring, and arranging concepts so we can understand and deal with them. Maya is all in our heads.
The danger comes when Maya is confused with reality. When all we see is Maya instead of seeing through her. When we live for her instead of just live. This I believe is what E.E. Cummings referred to when he warned against letting “being pay the rent of seem”. Maya is “seem.” We must, above all, “be.”
Maya is very useful and necessary. But Maya is also overbearing and demanding. She cannot be ruthlessly tossed aside, but her illusions and manipulations must be seen for what they are. And for what they are not. She is indeed a veil and she must be seen through. And seeing through a veil calls for a more focused vision.
I make my living dealing in Maya. Essentially I push information around, arranging it in time order, controlling its exposition. I unpack little boxes of Maya and put the contents into other little boxes of Maya. My job is to recognize patterns in the way these boxes are packed and think up better ways to pack them. To draw connections between seemingly unrelated boxes of Maya and create rules of thumb for others to deal with Maya.
Of course, the rules and patterns I create are Maya. The little boxes are Maya. Software process is Maya. Most of my hard-won “booklearnin’” is maya. Blogging is Maya. This post is Maya too.
I have come to see my dependence on Maya and that I am powerless over her. That, according to the Friends of Bill W., is the first step.