Did you forget my water? (part 2)
Sunday musings from the after the flood
This is a continuation of the story from the last post. If you haven’t read Part 1, I suggest doing so before reading the rest of this. It can be found here:
Now that you have read the story, let’s look a bit deeper into it, for there are layers of meaning and wisdom that might be missed if it is just read as a (kind of strange) story.
(Note: excerpts from the original story are in italics.)
He had studied with the master for many years, and he was fortunate to be one of his only students. They spent many hours in silent meditation and had progressed to the point where few words were needed. Yet the quiet ache of a man still wanting something more remained. Perhaps he began his years as a student when he was too young and had never really experienced all of the ups and downs life so generously (and ruthlessly) provides. Perhaps he just wasn’t as wise as he thought he was.
The student found a true teacher. This is a great boon. So many who call themselves teachers or even influencers are really not qualified, as few have done the real work to get to a place of clarity where they can transmit their teaching to another without the overlays of egoism, power, and spiritual bypassing. Here we have a teacher who not only was able to take his student into deep realization through meditation, but he also allowed the space for the student to have their own human emotions of longing and dissatisfaction with their life. Many teachers of our time would belittle the student, or worse, try to force them into repressing their emotions via such actions as excessive chanting, fasting, guilt, and shame. The teacher allowed the student to be himself, knowing the way a true teacher does, that when the student was ready, they would speak.
As they were drinking their morning chai, the student finally blurted out, “Master, how can I understand what Maya is since I have never really experienced it?”
“Maya” is a fascinating concept that originated in South Asia. Many people have heard the word, but like many things, the full understanding of it may be further developed. Let’s dig in for a moment.
The dictionary definition is “the power by which the universe becomes manifest. The illusion or appearance of the reality of the phenomenal world.” In other words, everything we experience with our external senses is a manifestation of Maya.
The word Maya first appears in the Rig Veda over 3,000 years ago. Originally, it didn’t mean illusion. It meant the mysterious and sacred force through which the gods created form, speech, and structure.
The idea evolved as the sages turned inward. By the time another core book of South Asian philosophy, the Upanishads, were written a few hundred years later, Maya started to carry a different kind of weight. It came to mean the veil between what is perceived and the greater reality of what is. It described how our senses, our memories, our conditioning, all wrap themselves around the world and offer us something that feels real, but is really quite subjective.
By the time of Shankara, the great Advaita philosopher in the 8th century, Maya had matured into something deeper. Shankara expounded that it is not just illusion, but the fundamental misunderstanding that makes the One look like the many. It is the unconscious ignorance that makes the eternal seem temporary. It creates the mistake of perceiving the reflection for the source.
The moon appears luminous, and we marvel at it. But its glow is not its own. What is seen is the light of the sun merely (and so beautifully!) reflected off the surface. In the same way, the world shines with color, sensation, and story, but its light and its reality come from elsewhere.
This is a complex and multilayered idea, so I’ll do a deeper dive on this in the next mailing. So let’s go back to the story.
I’d almost say that here the student blundered and went off the path. Certainly, to a judgmental mind, he did. He was living a beautiful life imbued with the highest truths, separated from the illusory web of Maya by the protection and guidance of his teacher. Yet, as so often happens, curiosity bubbled up. Did he really want to understand Maya, or did he want to experience it? My guess is the latter. He was young, curious, and perhaps a bit foolish, after all.
On a psychological level, and the way that I experience it as a medicine worker, Maya is the filter that the totality of a person’s accumulated existence places between the universe and the part of the brain that analyzes and categorizes the universe. Even more so, it is those aspects of the conscious and unconscious mind that color and misinterpret the perceptions of reality.
For example, I may see a beautiful flower. Am I just experiencing the flower in all its ‘flowerness’, or is there a running dialogue about the flower happening that might keep me from experiencing the flower as a flower? “See a tree as a tree” is a snippet that has been attributed to Lao Tsu, the great Chinese philosopher. It sounds so simple, and yet it is so difficult. And also so easy.
I may see a flower like the beautiful rose currently sitting on my altar and be in absolute awe at its beauty. So much awe that the mental dialogue stops, at least for a moment, and I and the flower are one with no filters or words. This holds the potential to be an experience of sublime beauty.
Or I may see the flower and think consciously or unconsciously about all the past experiences I have had with flowers. I may compare its shape and color to other roses, I may notice that one of the petals was nibbled on by a caterpillar, I can smell it and be disappointed because it doesn’t have the odor of the last rose I smelled, and soon, to me, it’s just another thing occupying space. Though still pretty, the potential experience of magic has been devoured by the dialogue in my head.
The teacher didn’t answer. He simply nodded toward the river and said, “I am thirsty. Please bring me some water.”
The student has no idea what he is in for. He asked to learn about Maya, and he’s going to get literally the lesson of his life. On a deeper level, the teacher represents the usually hidden part of a person who longs for understanding and truth. It’s so easy to lose that, given a good temptation!
She was on the opposite shore washing clothes. Strands of hair fell across her cheek. Her dark eyes flashed with life force. Her face was perfect. The student was instantly entranced!
Maya is entrancing, and the student was given a perfect piece of it. All thoughts and memories of his time with the teacher vanished. We all have our perfect piece of Maya that almost seems to have been engineered for the purpose of distraction and absorption. Many, really.
He hadn’t expected her to look up. But she did. And in that one meeting of their eyes, all of reality changed, and all thought of retrieving the water for his master evaporated.
They stared into each other’s eyes, the way young people besotted with each other will always do. Finally, the student managed to awkwardly croak out a few words, for he had never spoken before to a beautiful woman.
“May I help you carry your clothes?”
Maybe the student thought he would carry her clothes and then go back to the river to fetch the water for his master. More likely, and this is the power of Maya, all his inner yearning was transferred to the outer yearning for the beautiful woman, all his memory of his time with the teacher was relegated to that which we call the past, and he simply forgot what was in the deepest part of his heart.
This reflects in each person, otherwise it wouldn’t be a good story. It may not be a romantic connection. It could be a career, power, money, material objects, art, or anything that seduces a person away from their innate longing for Truth, and for their innate understanding to know who they really are. This is so true in our world that even the idea of an inner search to “find oneself” has become cliché, and something to grow out of early in the teenage years.
She accepted, and the student crossed the river and carefully picked up the clean clothing. They walked in silence on the path to her father’s house, shoulders almost touching.
He crossed his Rubicon. Let’s rephrase that, he chose to cross his Rubicon of his own accord. And he started a new life in the river of Maya.
Their wealth grew, but so did his generosity. He felt content. Full of the good feelings that success and family life brought.
He was happy.
Experiencing Maya can be a wonderful ride for those fortunate enough to have a beautiful and supportive life. This was the fate of the student. He achieved everything a person in his world could hope to achieve, and rightly so; this gave him great happiness. He wasn’t wrong to fall in love. He wasn’t wrong to forget. He was simply human, with the same longings that all of us carry.
I have to wonder at this point what would have happened to the student had he returned to the teacher and asked for his leave to follow both the worldly path and the spiritual path. That would be another story!
Then one season, the rains came with a ferocity that was only remembered in the stories of the elders, who heard it from their elders.
There was a fierce flood, unlike any before. The river turned wild and overflowed its banks. Soon, the water reached the village. Markets drowned. Homes collapsed and were washed away. His own caravan and all his shops were swept away. In horror, he saw his wife and all of his children captured by the river and taken to their doom. Then the flood claimed him and washed him into the center of the river.
I can imagine the horror and grief the student experienced. Everything he had worked for, everything he had loved, not only washed away, but washed away before his eyes. It could have ended there, a tragic and cruel story. But remember, he asked the teacher to help him understand Maya.
Unfortunately, no matter how beautiful the experience is, it is bound in time and so will be temporary. Nearly everyone lives in fear of this happening in their life. It’s one of the sources of the dreaded “whatifitis” that wakes a person in the middle of the night with existential dread. We know that one day, everything we have worked and lived for in the material world will vanish, for we will no longer be here. This is inevitable.
Fortunately, the course of the river deposited him on its bank. He was devastated, heartbroken, for he had lost everything. He bent over, wailing in grief. Finally, he looked up and saw an empty clay pot on the ground right next to him.
Yet in a flash, there can be an awakening, a remembering, a rekindling of the inner voice that got lost in a single stray thought. It may seem like we are back where we started, yet the journey of life changes a person, tempering and hopefully making him wiser. The student got his experience of Maya, and in doing so, he lost his teacher. But not really, for the true teacher, though they may manifest as a physical person, is really the voice of the heart within.
Then he heard a voice he had forgotten, the voice of his beloved teacher.
“Did you forget my water?” were the only words that needed to be spoken.
Waking from Maya is a powerful ‘ah ha’ moment. It’s not necessarily easy. It is possible that it took him a long time to return to the joy of being a student. Or perhaps he broke down in happy laughter about his trip into the illusion. But he was back where he started, going to the river to fetch some water for his teacher. My guess is that what he did was cry joyous tears.
Perhaps he will forget again. He’s human. Or perhaps, when he forgot again, remembering would come more easily. Certainly, he’d never see a clay pot as just a clay pot again.
He walked for the rest of his days with a bit more awareness, knowing he had received the experience he asked for, and an extraordinary lesson he hadn’t known he needed, but did.
Thank you for reading.
If something in these words stirred something in you, I’d love to hear it. These conversations matter more than ever. You can reply here, or simply hit the “like” button and sit with what came up. Either way, may the soft voice within you be a little easier to hear today.
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What a beautiful and well written post. I have not heard this one before.
The part where you talk about everything being temporary really touched a nerve with me.
Congratulations on your analysis and description of the concept of Maya. How many times we have found ourselves in a tale like you described!. Thank you very much.