Recently, I was discussing Hinduism and the ideas of freedom and maya with one of my close friends. When I explained to her that for me, the goal of Hinduism — and of my life — is to become free and to understand that there is more to reality than just this physical world, she made a really interesting point: doesn’t such thinking justify our lack of concern about the deterioration of the world around us?
In other words, if we assume that the world is an illusion, it becomes really easy to do all sorts of terrible things; if the world isn’t real, then it doesn’t really matter if we pollute it, or brings species to extinction, or exhaust our natural resources, or wage wars; thinking that the world is an illusion may give some people license to damage the earth.
I wasn’t sure how to respond, other than that people who honestly believe that there is something beyond this world would naturally act in ways that help others and in ways that don’t damage the earth…But I thought she had a really important point, that it is really easy to misinterpret this idea of freedom.
How would you guys respond to this? How can we know the correct way to interpret our religion, assuming that my earlier explanation is “correct”?
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One Comment
I think that the “<i>assuming that my earlier explanation is “correct”</i>” part is flawed.
It is incorrect to say that the world is an illusion: it is a misinterpretation (or mistranslation) of what “Maya” means. The world is all manifestation of Maya, but just because it is not the “ultimate reality” doesn’t mean it’s not real! The concept of Maya just means that there’s more than what we see.
As an analogy, if someone tells you that “there’s more to life than money”, it doesn’t mean that money is an illusion, or that money doesn’t exist. We still need money, and must work for it. It only means that we must not think that money is all there is.
The world still exists; we have to live and act in this world, and dharma and karma are defined with respect what goes on in the world. If we use an excuse of world-as-illusion and fail to do things we ought to — e.g. have a lack of concern, as you said — our conduct would be adharma, and have its consequences. The only consequence of Maya etc. is that conduct in the world is not by itself sufficient for anything to do with the realm of the ultimate reality; that’s why “moksha” is a separate goal from “dharma”.
There has been a lot of misinterpretation, especially by Western English-speaking academics, who have translated “maya” as “illusion” and characterised (e.g.) Advaita Vedanta as “world-denying”. In truth it is not so!
[BTW, accessing swadharma.org from India gives a 403 forbidden error; is this intentional?]
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