Dialectical materialism

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Dialectical materialism is a materialist theory based upon the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that has found widespread applications in a variety of philosophical disciplines ranging from philosophy of history to philosophy of science. As a materialist philosophy, Marxist dialectics emphasizes the importance of real-world conditions and the presence of contradictions within and among social relations, such as social class, labour economics, and socioeconomic interactions. Within Marxism, a contradiction is a relationship in which two forces oppose each other, leading to mutual development.

The first law of dialectics is about “the unity and conflict of opposites”. It explains that all things are made up of opposing forces, not purely "good" nor purely "bad", but that everything contains internal contradictions at varying levels of aspects we might call "good" or "bad", depending on the conditions and perspective. An example of this unity and conflict is the negative and positive particles that make up atoms.

The second law of dialectics is ‘quantity into quality’ that small quantitative changes, such as increasing the heat of water by one degree at a time, at a certain point result in a qualitative change when the water turns into steam.

The third law is the ‘negation of the negation’. In the history of life on Earth, photosynthetic organisms evolved, and their byproduct—molecular oxygen—was toxic to life. At this point oxygen negated life. But when life evolved bacteria that utilized oxygen for its own metabolism, oxygen stopped being a toxin for a whole branch of organisms. This was the 'negation of the negation', and an example of something turning into its opposite.

In contrast with the idealist perspective of Hegelian dialectics, the materialist perspective of Marxist dialectics emphasizes that contradictions in material phenomena could be resolved with dialectical analysis, from which is synthesized the solution that resolves the contradiction, whilst retaining the essence of the phenomena. Marx proposed that the most effective solution to the problems caused by contradiction was to address the contradiction and then rearrange the systems of social organization that are the root of the problem.

Dialectical materialism recognises the evolution of the natural world, and thus the emergence of new qualities of being human and of human existence. Engels used the metaphysical insight that the higher level of human existence emerges from and is rooted in the lower level of human existence. He believed that the higher level of being is a new order with irreducible laws, and that evolution is governed by laws of development, which reflect the basic properties of matter in motion.

In the 20th century, the revolutionary Marxist Vladimir Lenin proposed his own interpretation of Marxist dialectics, which took an essential place among the views and doctrines of Leninism and was later propagated by his followers such as Leon Trotsky. Since the 1930s, a Marxist-Leninist reading of dialectical materialism introduced by such leaders of communist states as Joseph Stalin (Soviet Union) and Mao Zedong (Maoist China) set forth the official formulations on dialectical materialism and historical materialism, which were taught in state systems of education. In the West, different approaches towards Marxist dialectics were proposed by such authors of Western Marxism as György Lukács and Slavoj Žižek.

The term

The term dialectical materialism was coined in 1887 by Joseph Dietzgen, a socialist who corresponded with Marx, during and after the failed 1848 German Revolution. Casual mention of the term "dialectical materialism" is also found in the biography Frederick Engels, by philosopher Karl Kautsky, written in 1899. Marx himself had talked about the "materialist conception of history", which was later referred to as "historical materialism" by Engels. Engels "substantially developed materialist dialectics" in his incomplete 1883 work Dialectics of Nature. Georgi Plekhanov, the father of Russian Marxism, first used the term "dialectical materialism" in 1891 in his writings on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Marx.

Historical background

Marx and Engels each began their adulthood as Young Hegelians, one of several groups of intellectuals inspired by the philosopher Hegel. Marx's doctoral thesis, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature, was concerned with the atomism of Epicurus and Democritus, which is considered the foundation of materialist philosophy. Marx was also familiar with Lucretius's theory of clinamen.

Marx and Engels both concluded that Hegelian philosophy, at least as interpreted by their former colleagues, was too abstract and was being misapplied in attempts to explain the social injustice in recently industrializing countries such as Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, which was a growing concern in the early 1840s, as exemplified by Dickensian inequity.

In contrast to the conventional Hegelian dialectic of the day, which emphasized the idealist observation that human experience is dependent on the mind's perceptions, Marx developed Marxist dialectics, which emphasized the materialist view that the world of the concrete shapes socioeconomic interactions and that those in turn determine sociopolitical reality.

Whereas some Hegelians blamed religious alienation (estrangement from the traditional comforts of religion) for societal ills, Marx and Engels concluded that alienation from economic and political autonomy, coupled with exploitation and poverty, was the real culprit.

In keeping with dialectical ideas, Marx and Engels thus created an alternative theory, not only of why the world is the way it is but also of which actions people should take to make it the way it ought to be. In Theses on Feuerbach (1845), Marx wrote a famous quote, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Dialectical materialism is thus closely related to Marx's and Engels's historical materialism (and has sometimes been viewed as synonymous with it). Marx rejected Fichte's language of "thesis, antithesis, synthesis".

Dialectical materialism is an aspect of the broader subject of materialism, which asserts the primacy of the material world: in short, matter precedes thought. Materialism is a realist philosophy of science, which holds that the world is material; that all phenomena in the universe consist of "matter in motion," wherein all things are interdependent and interconnected and develop according to natural law; that the world exists outside consciousness and independently of people's perception of it; that thought is a reflection of the material world in the brain, and that the world is in principle knowable.

Marx criticized classical materialism as another idealist philosophy—idealist because of its transhistorical understanding of material contexts. The Young Hegelian Ludwig Feuerbach had rejected Hegel's idealistic philosophy and advocated materialism. Despite being strongly influenced by Feuerbach, Marx rejected Feuerbach's version of materialism (anthropological materialism) as inconsistent. The writings of Engels, especially Anti-Dühring (1878) and Dialectics of Nature (1875–82), were the source of the main doctrines of dialectical materialism.

Classical Marxism

Marx's dialectics

Main article: Marxist dialectic

The concept of dialectical materialism emerges from statements by Marx in the second edition postface to his magnum opus, Das Kapital. There Marx says he intends to use Hegelian dialectics but in revised form. He defends Hegel against those who view him as a "dead dog" and then says, "I openly avowed myself as the pupil of that mighty thinker Hegel". Marx credits Hegel with "being the first to present [dialectic's] form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner". But he then criticizes Hegel for turning dialectics upside down: "With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.".

Marx's criticism of Hegel asserts that Hegel's dialectics go astray by dealing with ideas, with the human mind. Hegel's dialectic, Marx says, inappropriately concerns "the process of the human brain"; it focuses on ideas. Hegel's thought is in fact sometimes called dialectical idealism, and Hegel himself is counted among a number of other philosophers known as the German idealists. Marx, on the contrary, believed that dialectics should deal not with the mental world of ideas but with "the material world", the world of production and other economic activity. For Marx, a contradiction can be solved by a desperate struggle to change the social world. This was a very important transformation because it allowed him to move dialectics out of the contextual subject of philosophy and into the study of social relations based on the material world.

For Marx, human history cannot be fitted into any neat a priori schema. He explicitly rejects the idea of Hegel's followers that history can be understood as "a person apart, a metaphysical subject of which real human individuals are but the bearers". To interpret history as though previous social formations have somehow been aiming themselves toward the present state of affairs is "to misunderstand the historical movement by which the successive generations transformed the results acquired by the generations that preceded them". Marx's rejection of this sort of teleology was one reason for his enthusiastic (though not entirely uncritical) reception of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection.

For Marx, dialectics is not a formula for generating predetermined outcomes but is a method for the empirical study of social processes in terms of interrelations, development, and transformation. In his introduction to the Penguin edition of Marx's Capital, Ernest Mandel writes, "When the dialectical method is applied to the study of economic problems, economic phenomena are not viewed separately from each other, by bits and pieces, but in their inner connection as an integrated totality, structured around, and by, a basic predominant mode of production."

Marx's own writings are almost exclusively concerned with understanding human history in terms of systemic processes, based on modes of production (broadly speaking, the ways in which societies are organized to employ their technological powers to interact with their material surroundings). This is called historical materialism. More narrowly, within the framework of this general theory of history, most of Marx's writing is devoted to an analysis of the specific structure and development of the capitalist economy.

For his part, Engels applies a "dialectical" approach to the natural world in general, arguing that contemporary science is increasingly recognizing the necessity of viewing natural processes in terms of interconnectedness, development, and transformation. Some scholars have doubted that Engels' "dialectics of nature" is a legitimate extension of Marx's approach to social processes. Other scholars have argued that despite Marx's insistence that humans are natural beings in an evolving, mutual relationship with the rest of nature, Marx's own writings pay inadequate attention to the ways in which human agency is constrained by such factors as biology, geography, and ecology.

Engels's dialectics

Engels postulated three laws of dialectics from his reading of Hegel's Science of Logic. Engels elucidated these laws as the materialist dialectic in his work Dialectics of Nature:

1. The law of the unity and conflict of opposites
2. The law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes
3. The law of the negation of the negation

The first law, which originates with the ancient Ionian philosopher Heraclitus, can be clarified through the following examples:

For example, in biological evolution the formation of new forms of life occurs precisely through the unity and struggle of opposites in heredity and variability. In physical processes the nature of light was explained precisely by means of the unity and struggle of opposites appearing, for example, as corpuscular and wave properties; this, moreover, cleared the path for a “drama of ideas” in physical science, whereby the opposition and synthesis of corpuscular and wave theories characterized scientific progress. The most basic expression of the unity and struggle of opposites in the world of commodity capitalism is that of use value and value; the most highly developed oppositions in capitalism are the working class and the bourgeoisie,

— The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979), Unity and Struggle of Opposites – Web page

The first law was seen by both Hegel and Vladimir Lenin as the central feature of a dialectical understanding:

It is in this dialectic as it is here understood, that is, in the grasping of oppositions in their unity, or of the positive in the negative, that speculative thought consists. It is the most important aspect of dialectic.

— Hegel, Science of Logic, § 69, (p. 56 in the Miller edition)

The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts is the essence (one of the "essentials", one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristics or features) of dialectics. That is precisely how Hegel, too, puts the matter.

— Lenin's Collected Works: Volume 38, p. 359: On the question of dialectics.

The second law Hegel took from Ancient Greek philosophers, notably the paradox of the heap, and explanation by Aristotle, and it is equated with what scientists call phase transitions. It may be traced to the ancient Ionian philosophers, particularly Anaximenes from whom Aristotle, Hegel, and Engels inherited the concept. For all these authors, one of the main illustrations is the phase transitions of water. There has also been an effort to apply this mechanism to social phenomena, whereby population increases result in changes in social structure. The law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes can also be applied to the process of social change and class conflict.

The third law, "negation of the negation", originated with Hegel. Although Hegel coined the term "negation of the negation", it gained its fame from Marx's using it in Capital. There Marx wrote this: "The [death] knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property ... But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It [this new negation] is the negation of negation."

Z. A. Jordan notes, "Engels made constant use of the metaphysical insight that the higher level of existence emerges from and has its roots in the lower; that the higher level constitutes a new order of being with its irreducible laws; and that this process of evolutionary advance is governed by laws of development which reflect basic properties of 'matter in motion as a whole'."

Engels writes that negation of negation is "A very simple process which is taking place everywhere and every day, which any child can understand".   Engels' assertion is amplified in Dialectics4kids.org, featured in the film Half Nelson, in which Ryan Gosling was nominated for an academy award, playing a classroom teacher expounding Engels’ dialectics.

--Anti-Duhring, pg 148 International Publishers, 1966

Vladimir Lenin's contributions

After reading Hegel's Science of Logic in 1914, Lenin made some brief notes outlining three "elements" of logic. They are:

1. The determination of the concept out of itself [the thing itself must be considered in its relations and in its development];
2. The contradictory nature of the thing itself (the other of itself), the contradictory forces and tendencies in each phenomenon;
3. The union of analysis and synthesis.

Lenin develops these in a further series of notes, and appears to argue that "the transition of quantity into quality and vice versa" is an example of the unity and opposition of opposites expressed tentatively as "not only the unity of opposites but the transitions of every determination, quality, feature, side, property into every other [into its opposite?]."

In his essay "On the Question of Dialectics", Lenin stated, "Development is the 'struggle' of opposites." He stated, "The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute."

In Materialism and Empiriocriticism (1908), Lenin defended dialectical materialism against those who sought to introduced elements of philosophical idealism into it. For some, late-century discoveries in physics (x-rays, electrons), and the beginning of quantum mechanics, philosophically challenged previous conceptions of matter and materialism, thus matter seemed to be disappearing. Lenin disagreed:

'Matter disappears' means that the limit within which we have hitherto known matter disappears, and that our knowledge is penetrating deeper; properties of matter are disappearing that formerly seemed absolute, immutable, and primary, and which are now revealed to be relative and characteristic only of certain states of matter. For the sole 'property' of matter, with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up, is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside of the mind.

Lenin was developing the work of Engels, who said that "with each epoch-making discovery, even in the sphere of natural science, materialism has to change its form". One of Lenin's challenges was distancing materialism, as a viable philosophical outlook, from the "vulgar materialism" expressed in the statement "the brain secretes thought in the same way as the liver secretes bile" (attributed to 18th-century physician Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis); "metaphysical materialism" (matter composed of immutable particles); and 19th-century "mechanical materialism" (matter as random molecules interacting per the laws of mechanics). The philosophic solution that Lenin (and Engels) proposed was to define matter as objective reality, theoretically consistent with (new) developments occurring in the sciences.

Trotskyism

In 1926, Leon Trotsky said in a speech:

It is the task of science and technology to make matter subject to man, together with space and time, which are inseparable from matter. True, there are certain idealist books—not of a clerical character, but philosophical ones—wherein you can read that time and space are categories of our minds, that they result from the requirements of our thinking, and that nothing actually corresponds to them in reality. But it is difficult to agree with this view. If any idealist philosopher, instead of arriving in time to catch the 9 pm train, should turn up two minutes late, he would see the tail of the departing train and would be convinced by his own eyes that time and space are inseparable from material reality. The task is to diminish this space, to overcome it, to economise time, to prolong human life, to register past time, to raise life to a higher level and enrich it. This is the reason for the struggle with space and time, at the basis of which lies the struggle to subject matter to man—matter, which constitutes the foundation not only of everything that really exists, but also of all imagination ... Every science is an accumulation of knowledge, based on experience relating to matter, to its properties; an accumulation of generalised understanding of how to subject this matter to the interests and needs of man.

In his book In Defence of Marxism, Trotsky defended the dialectical method of scientific socialism during the factional schisms within the American Trotskyist movement in the period 1939–40. Trotsky viewed dialectics as an essential method of analysis to discern class nature of the Soviet Union. Specifically, he described scientific socialism as "the conscious expression of the unconscious historical process; namely, the instinctive and elemental drive of the proletariat to reconstruct society on communist beginnings".

Western Marxism

György Lukács's contributions

György Lukács, Minister of Culture in the brief Béla Kun government of the Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919), published History and Class Consciousness (1923), in which he defined dialectical materialism as the knowledge of society as a whole, knowledge which, in itself, was the class consciousness of the proletariat. In the first chapter "What is Orthodox Marxism?", Lukács defined orthodoxy as fidelity to the "Marxist method", not fidelity to "dogmas":

Orthodox Marxism, therefore, does not imply the uncritical acceptance of the results of Marx's investigations. It is not the "belief" in this or that thesis, nor the exegesis of a "sacred" book. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers exclusively to method. It is the scientific conviction that dialectical materialism is the road to truth and that its methods can be developed, expanded, and deepened, only along the lines laid down by its founders. (§1)

In his later works and actions, Lukács became a leader of Democratic Marxism. He modified many of his formulations of his 1923 works and went on to develop a Marxist ontology and played an active role in democratic movements in Hungary in 1956 and the 1960s. He and his associates became sharply critical of the formulation of dialectical materialism in the Soviet Union that was exported to those countries under its control. In the 1960s, his associates became known as the Budapest School.

Lukács, in his philosophical criticism of Marxist revisionism, proposed an intellectual return to the Marxist method. So did Louis Althusser, who later defined Marxism and psychoanalysis as "conflictual sciences", stating that political factions and revisionism are inherent to Marxist theory and political praxis, because dialectical materialism is the philosophic product of class struggle:

For this reason, the task of orthodox Marxism, its victory over Revisionism and utopianism can never mean the defeat, once and for all, of false tendencies. It is an ever-renewed struggle against the insidious effects of bourgeois ideology on the thought of the proletariat. Marxist orthodoxy is no guardian of traditions, it is the eternally vigilant prophet proclaiming the relation between the tasks of the immediate present and the totality of the historical process.  

...the premise of dialectical materialism is, we recall: 'It is not men's consciousness that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness'.... Only when the core of existence stands revealed as a social process can existence be seen as the product, albeit the hitherto unconscious product, of human activity. (§5)

Philosophically aligned with Marx is the criticism of the individualist, bourgeois philosophy of the subject, which is founded upon the voluntary and conscious subject. Against said ideology is the primacy of social relations. Existence—and thus the world—is the product of human activity, but this can be seen only by accepting the primacy of social process on individual consciousness. This type of consciousness is an effect of ideological mystification.

At the 5th Congress of the Communist International (July 1924), Grigory Zinoviev formally denounced Lukács's heterodox definition of Orthodox Marxism as exclusively derived from fidelity to the "Marxist method", and not to Communist party dogmas; and denounced the philosophical developments of the German Marxist theorist Karl Korsch.

Slavoj Žižek's contributions

Slavoj Žižek proposed a new approach towards dialectical materialism as a "radical attempt to ground subjectivity qua subjectivity into objectivity — not merely find the hidden 'objective reality' of thought." In his approach, he refused "to rule out the reference to Stalin's Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938) as a provocation," and his views have ambiguous relations to the writings of Engels and Stalin. "On the one hand, the birth of the Symbolic from the Real without the intermediary of a socially shared space bears a strong resemblance to the emergence of universal human history from matter in motion, histomat from diamat." On the other hand, Žižek believes that what makes his approach essentially materialist is the denial of totality as opposite to Stalinist dialectics which rely on considering history and society as totalities, unified wholes.

For Zižek, 'the Other' (whether the Symbolic Order, or a political regime) never 'exists' as the fully consistent whole that subjects imagine, as they shape their identities in relation to it. This means that society, history and culture ultimately always depend for their illusory 'existence' as apparent wholes on the (unconscious) beliefs of subjects in them. This truth is registered in a series of 'material' inconsistencies: the way ideologies have to posit enemies 'supposed to enjoy' our difficulties, and to rest at their heart on sublime Ideas like 'the Nation', which no one can directly say what their content is. Thus, Žižek's 'dialectical materialism' is ultimately the doctrine that 'the Other does not exist'.

Marxism-Leninism

Joseph Stalin

In the 1930s, Stalin and his associates formulated a version of dialectical and historical materialism that became the "official" Soviet interpretation of Marxism. It was codified in Stalin's work, Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938), and popularized in textbooks used for compulsory education within the Soviet Union and throughout the Eastern Bloc.

Mao Zedong

In On Contradiction (1937), Mao Zedong outlined a version of dialectical materialism that subsumed two of Engels's three principal laws of dialectics, "the transformation of quantity into quality" and "the negation of the negation" as sub-laws (and not principal laws of their own) of the first law, "the unity and interpenetration of opposites".

Ho Chi Minh

In his 1947 article New Life, Ho Chi Minh described the dialectical relationship between the old and the new in building society, stating:

Not everything old must be abandoned. We do not have to reinvent everything. What is old but bad must be abandoned. What is old but troublesome must be corrected appropriately. What is old but good must be further developed. What is new but good must be done.

As a heuristic in science and elsewhere

Historian of science Loren Graham has detailed at length the role played by dialectical materialism in the Soviet Union in disciplines throughout the natural and social sciences. He has concluded that, despite the Lysenko period in genetics and constraints on free inquiry imposed by political authorities, dialectical materialism had a positive influence on the work of many Soviet scientists.

Some evolutionary biologists, such as Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould, have tried to employ dialectical materialism in their approach. They view dialectics as playing a precautionary heuristic role in their work. Lewontin's perspective offers the following idea:

Dialectical materialism is not, and never has been, a programmatic method for solving particular physical problems. Rather, a dialectical analysis provides an overview and a set of warning signs against particular forms of dogmatism and narrowness of thought. It tells us, "Remember that history may leave an important trace. Remember that being and becoming are dual aspects of nature. Remember that conditions change and that the conditions necessary to the initiation of some process may be destroyed by the process itself. Remember to pay attention to real objects in time and space and not lose them in utterly idealized abstractions. Remember that the qualitative effects of context and interaction may be lost when phenomena are isolated". And above all else, "Remember that all the other caveats are only reminders and warning signs whose application to different circumstances of the real world is contingent."

Gould shared similar views regarding a heuristic role for dialectical materialism. He wrote that:

...dialectical thinking should be taken more seriously by Western scholars, not discarded because some nations of the second world have constructed a cardboard version as an official political doctrine.

...when presented as guidelines for a philosophy of change, not as dogmatic precepts true by fiat, the three classical laws of dialectics embody a holistic vision that views change as interaction among components of complete systems and sees the components themselves not as a priori entities, but as both products and inputs to the system. Thus, the law of "interpenetrating opposites" records the inextricable interdependence of components: the "transformation of quantity to quality" defends a systems-based view of change that translates incremental inputs into alterations of state, and the "negation of negation" describes the direction given to history because complex systems cannot revert exactly to previous states.

This heuristic was also applied to the theory of punctuated equilibrium proposed by Gould and Niles Eldredge. They wrote that "history, as Hegel said, moves upward in a spiral of negations", and that "punctuated equilibria is a model for discontinuous tempos of change (in) the process of speciation and the deployment of species in geological time." They noted that "the law of transformation of quantity into quality... holds that a new quality emerges in a leap as the slow accumulation of quantitative changes, long resisted by a stable system, finally forces it rapidly from one state into another", a phenomenon described in some disciplines as a paradigm shift. Apart from the commonly cited example of water turning to steam with increased temperature, Gould and Eldredge noted another analogy in information theory, "with its jargon of equilibrium, steady state, and homeostasis maintained by negative feedback", and "extremely rapid transitions that occur with positive feedback".

Lewontin, Gould, and Eldredge were thus more interested in dialectical materialism as a heuristic than a dogmatic form of 'truth' or a statement of their politics. Nevertheless, they found a readiness for critics to "seize upon" key statements and portray punctuated equilibrium, and exercises associated with it, such as public exhibitions, as a "Marxist plot".

The Communist Party's official interpretation of Marxism, dialectical materialism, fit Alexander Oparin's studies on the origins of life as 'a flow, an exchange, a dialectical unity'. This notion was re-enforced by Oparin's association with Lysenko.

In 1972, China's Cultural Revolution slowed down and scientific research restarted. Astrophysicist and cosmologist Fang Lizhi found an opportunity to read some recent astrophysics papers in western journals, and soon wrote his first paper on cosmology, "A Cosmological Solution in Scalar-tensor Theory with Mass and Blackbody Radiation", which was published on the journal Wu Li (Physics), Vol. 1, 163 (1972). This was the first modern cosmological research paper in mainland China. Fang assembled a group of young faculty members of USTC around him to conduct astrophysics research.At the time, conducting research on relativity theory and cosmology in China was very risky politically, because these theories were considered to be "idealistic" theories in contradiction with the dialectical materialism theory, which is the official philosophy of the Communist Party. According to the dialectical materialism philosophy, both time and space must be infinite, while the Big Bang theory allows the possibility of the finiteness of space and time. During the Cultural Revolution, campaigns were waged against Albert Einstein and his theory of general relativity in Beijing and Shanghai. Once Fang published his theory, some of the critics of relativity, especially a group based in Shanghai, prepared to attack Fang politically. However, by this time the "leftist" line was declining in the Chinese academia. Professor Dai Wensai, the most well-known Chinese astronomer at the time and chair of the Astronomy Department of Nanjing University, also supported Fang. Many of the members of the "Theory of Relativity Criticism Group" changed to study the theory and conduct research in it. Subsequently, Fang was regarded as the father of cosmological research in China.

Philosophical evaluations

Philosopher Allen Wood argued that, in its form as an official Soviet philosophy, dialectical materialism was doomed to be superficial because "creativity or critical thinking" was impossible in an authoritarian environment. Nevertheless, he considered the basic aims and principles of dialectical materialism to be in harmony with rational scientific thought.

Economist and philosopher Ludwig von Mises wrote a critique of Marxist materialism which he published as a part of his 1957 work Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution. H. B. Acton described Marxism as "a philosophical farrago". Max Eastman argued that dialectical materialism lacks a psychological basis.

Leszek Kołakowski criticized the laws of dialectics in Main Currents of Marxism, arguing that they consist partly of truisms with no specific Marxist content, partly of philosophical dogmas, partly of nonsense, and partly of statements that could be any of these things depending on how they are interpreted.

Of the term

Joseph Needham, an influential historian of science and a Christian who nonetheless was an adherent of dialectical materialism, suggested that a more appropriate term might be "dialectical organicism".

Marxist rejection

Though a minority position, some Marxists have called into question the adequacy of dialectical materialism as a label for Marxist philosophy. For instance, Z.A. Jordan argued that "Engels is the founder of dialectical materialism," denying that he and Marx shared a common philosophy. Though less categorical in his separation of Engels from Marx, John Holloway writes that "Engels’ understanding of the dialectic method is an extremely diluted one." According to this argument, while Marx's writings afforded human subjectivity a role in the revolutionary process, Engels's aspirations to scientific validity led to an "exclusion of subjectivity: ‘scientific’ is identified with ‘objective’." Anti-communist, formerly Marxist humanist, Leszek Kołakowski argued that dialectical materialism was not truly Marxist.

Maya (religion)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(religion)

Maya (/ˈmɑːjə/; Devanagari: माया; IPA: [mɑː.jɑ́ː]; IAST: māyā), literally "illusion" or "magic", has multiple meanings in Indian philosophies depending on the context. In later Vedic texts, māyā connotes a "magic show, an illusion where things appear to be present but are not what they seem"; the principle which shows "attributeless Absolute" as having "attributes". Māyā also connotes that which "is constantly changing and thus is spiritually unreal" (in opposition to an unchanging Absolute, or Brahman), and therefore "conceals the true character of spiritual reality".

In the Advaita Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy, māyā, "appearance", is "the powerful force that creates the cosmic illusion that the phenomenal world is real". In this nondualist school, māyā at the individual level appears as the lack of knowledge (avidyā) of the real Self, Atman-Brahman, mistakenly identifying with the body-mind complex and its entanglements.

In Buddhist philosophy, māyā is one of twenty subsidiary unwholesome mental factors, responsible for deceit or concealment about the illusionary nature of things.

In Hindu pantheon, the goddess Durga is seen as the embodiment of maya. Māyā was also the name of Gautama Buddha's mother.

Etymology and terminology

Māyā (Sanskrit: माया), a word with unclear etymology, probably comes from the root mā which means "to measure".

According to Monier Williams, māyā meant "wisdom and extraordinary power" in an earlier older language, but from the Vedic period onwards, the word came to mean "illusion, unreality, deception, fraud, trick, sorcery, witchcraft and magic". However, P. D. Shastri states that the Monier Williams' list is a "loose definition, misleading generalization", and not accurate in interpreting ancient Vedic and medieval era Sanskrit texts; instead, he suggests a more accurate meaning of māyā is "appearance, not mere illusion".

According to William Mahony, the root of the word may be man- or "to think", implying the role of imagination in the creation of the world. In early Vedic usage, the term implies, states Mahony, "the wondrous and mysterious power to turn an idea into a physical reality".

Franklin Southworth states the word's origin is uncertain, and other possible roots of māyā include may- meaning mystify, confuse, intoxicate, delude, as well as māy- which means "disappear, be lost".

Jan Gonda considers the word related to mā, which means "mother", as do Tracy Pintchman and Adrian Snodgrass, serving as an epithet for goddesses such as Lakshmi and Durga.

A similar word is also found in the Avestan māyā with the meaning of "magic power".

Maya can refer to one or more types of illusion:

1. Illusion of the permanence of this world. Everything, including cells, humans, and stars, follow their own cycle of death & rebirth.
2. Illusion that each individual is independent from the world/ecosystem. Reality as a living being is a facet of God experiencing other facets (living beings). This Ecosystem includes farmers, bus/train drivers, shopkeepers, software engineers, etc. who are all inter-dependent.
3. Illusion that our ever-evolving desires can be satisfied. We desire something and feel that we will be happy if that desire is fulfilled. But, when it is fulfilled, we desire something else.

Hinduism

Literature

The Vedas

Words related to and containing Māyā, such as Mayava, occur many times in the Vedas. These words have various meanings, with interpretations that are contested, and some are names of deities that do not appear in texts of 1st millennium BCE and later. The use of word Māyā in Rig Veda, in the later era context of "magic, illusion, power", occurs in many hymns. One titled Māyā-bheda (मायाभेद:, Discerning Illusion) includes hymns 10.177.1 through 10.177.3, and the battle which unfolds between good and evil is as follows:

पतंगमक्तमसुरस्य मायया हृदा पश्यन्ति मनसा विपश्चितः ।
समुद्रे अन्तः कवयो वि चक्षते मरीचीनां पदमिच्छन्ति वेधसः ॥१॥
पतंगो वाचं मनसा बिभर्ति तां गन्धर्वोऽवदद्गर्भे अन्तः ।
तां द्योतमानां स्वर्यं मनीषामृतस्य पदे कवयो नि पान्ति ॥२॥
अपश्यं गोपामनिपद्यमानमा च परा च पथिभिश्चरन्तम् ।
स सध्रीचीः स विषूचीर्वसान आ वरीवर्ति भुवनेष्वन्तः ॥३॥

The wise behold with their mind in their heart the Sun, made manifest by the illusion of the Asura;
The sages look into the solar orb, the ordainers desire the region of his rays.
The Sun bears the word in his mind; the Gandharva has spoken it within the wombs;
sages cherish it in the place of sacrifice, brilliant, heavenly, ruling the mind.
I beheld the protector, never descending, going by his paths to the east and the west;
clothing the quarters of the heaven and the intermediate spaces. He constantly revolves in the midst of the worlds.

— Rig veda X.177.1-3, Translated by Laurie Patton

The above Maya-bheda hymn discerns, using symbolic language, a contrast between mind influenced by light (sun) and magic (illusion of Asura). The hymn is a call to discern one's enemies, perceive artifice, and distinguish, using one's mind, between that which is perceived and that which is unperceived. Rig Veda does not connote the word Māyā as always good or always bad, it is simply a form of technique, mental power and means. Rig Veda uses the word in two contexts, implying that there are two kinds of Māyā: divine Māyā and undivine Māyā, the former being the foundation of truth, the latter of falsehood.

Elsewhere in Vedic mythology, Indra uses Maya to conquer Vritra. Varuna's supernatural power is called Maya. Māyā, in such examples, connotes powerful magic, which both devas (gods) and asuras (demons) use against each other. In the Yajurveda, māyā is an unfathomable plan. In the Aitareya Brahmana Maya is also referred to as Dirghajihvi, hostile to gods and sacrifices. The hymns in Book 8, Chapter 10 of Atharvaveda describe the primordial woman Virāj (विराज्, chief queen) and how she willingly gave the knowledge of food, plants, agriculture, husbandry, water, prayer, knowledge, strength, inspiration, concealment, charm, virtue, vice to gods, demons, men and living creatures, despite all of them making her life miserable. In hymns of 8.10.22, Virāj is used by Asuras (demons) who call her as Māyā, as follows,

She rose. The Asuras saw her. They called her. Their cry was, "Come, O Māyā, come thou hither" !!
Her cow was Virochana Prahradi. Her milking vessel was a pan of iron.
Dvimurdha Artvya milked this Māyā.
The Asuras depend for life on Māyā for their sustenance.
One who knows this, becomes a fit supporter [of gods].

— Atharva veda VIII.10.22

The contextual meaning of Maya in Atharva Veda is "power of creation", not illusion. Gonda suggests the central meaning of Maya in Vedic literature is, "wisdom and power enabling its possessor, or being able itself, to create, devise, contrive, effect, or do something". Maya stands for anything that has real, material form, human or non-human, but that does not reveal the hidden principles and implicit knowledge that creates it. An illustrative example of this in Rig Veda VII.104.24 and Atharva Veda VIII.4.24 where Indra is invoked against the Maya of sorcerers appearing in the illusory form – like a fata morgana – of animals to trick a person.

The Upanishads

M. C. Escher paintings such as the Waterfall – redrawn in this sketch – demonstrates the Hindu concept of Maya, states Jeffrey Brodd. The impression of water-world the sketch gives, in reality is not what it seems.

The Upanishads describe the universe, and the human experience, as an interplay of Purusha (the eternal, unchanging principles, consciousness) and Prakṛti (the temporary, changing material world, nature). The former manifests itself as Ātman (Soul, Self), and the latter as Māyā. The Upanishads refer to the knowledge of Atman as "true knowledge" (Vidya), and the knowledge of Maya as "not true knowledge" (Avidya, Nescience, lack of awareness, lack of true knowledge). Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, states Ben-Ami Scharfstein, describes Maya as "the tendency to imagine something where it does not exist, for example, atman with the body". To the Upanishads, knowledge includes empirical knowledge and spiritual knowledge, complete knowing necessarily includes understanding the hidden principles that work, the realization of the soul of things.

Hendrick Vroom explains, "The term Maya has been translated as 'illusion,' but then it does not concern normal illusion. Here 'illusion' does not mean that the world is not real and simply a figment of the human imagination. Maya means that the world is not as it seems; the world that one experiences is misleading as far as its true nature is concerned." Lynn Foulston states, "The world is both real and unreal because it exists but is 'not what it appears to be'." According to Wendy Doniger, "to say that the universe is an illusion (māyā) is not to say that it is unreal; it is to say, instead, that it is not what it seems to be, that it is something constantly being made. Māyā not only deceives people about the things they think they know; more basically, it limits their knowledge."

Māyā pre-exists and co-exists with Brahman – the Ultimate Principle, Consciousness. Maya is perceived reality, one that does not reveal the hidden principles, the true reality. Maya is unconscious, Atman is conscious. Maya is the literal, Brahman is the figurative Upādāna – the principle, the cause. Maya is born, changes, evolves, dies with time, from circumstances, due to invisible principles of nature, state the Upanishads. Atman-Brahman is eternal, unchanging, invisible principle, unaffected absolute and resplendent consciousness. Maya concept in the Upanishads, states Archibald Gough, is "the indifferent aggregate of all the possibilities of emanatory or derived existences, pre-existing with Brahman", just like the possibility of a future tree pre-exists in the seed of the tree.

The concept of Maya appears in numerous Upanishads. The verses 4.9 to 4.10 of Svetasvatara Upanishad, is the oldest explicit occurrence of the idea that Brahman (Supreme Soul) is the hidden reality, nature is magic, Brahman is the magician, human beings are infatuated with the magic and thus they create bondage to illusions and delusions, and for freedom and liberation one must seek true insights and correct knowledge of the principles behind the hidden magic. Gaudapada in his Karika on Mandukya Upanishad explains the interplay of Atman and Maya as follows,

The Soul is imagined first, then the particularity of objects,
External and internal, as one knows so one remembers.
As a rope, not perceived distinctly in dark, is erroneously imagined,
As snake, as a streak of water, so is the Soul (Atman) erroneously imagined.
As when the rope is distinctly perceived, and the erroneous imagination withdrawn,
Only the rope remains, without a second, so when distinctly perceived, the Atman.
When he as Pranas (living beings), as all the diverse objects appears to us,
Then it is all mere Maya, with which the Brahman (Supreme Soul) deceives himself.

— Gaudapada, Māṇḍukya Kārikā 2.16-19

Sarvasara Upanishad refers to two concepts: Mithya and Maya. It defines Mithya as illusion and calls it one of three kinds of substances, along with Sat (Be-ness, True) and Asat (not-Be-ness, False). Maya, Sarvasara Upanishad defines as all what is not Atman. Maya has no beginning, but has an end. Maya, declares Sarvasara, is anything that can be studied and subjected to proof and disproof, anything with Guṇas. In the human search for Self-knowledge, Maya is that which obscures, confuses and distracts an individual.

The Puranas

Markandeya sees Vishnu as an infant on a fig leaf in the deluge

In Puranas and Vaishnava theology, māyā is described as one of the nine shaktis of Vishnu. Māyā became associated with sleep; and Vishnu's māyā is sleep which envelopes the world when he awakes to destroy evil. Vishnu, like Indra, is the master of māyā; and māyā envelopes Vishnu's body. The Bhagavata Purana narrates that the sage Markandeya requests Vishnu to experience his māyā. Vishnu appears as an infant floating on a fig leaf in a deluge and then swallows the sage, the sole survivor of the cosmic flood. The sage sees various worlds of the universe, gods etc. and his own hermitage in the infant's belly. Then the infant breathes out the sage, who tries to embrace the infant, but everything disappears and the sage realizes that he was in his hermitage the whole time and was given a flavor of Vishnu's māyā. The magic creative power, Māyā was always a monopoly of the central Solar God; and was also associated with the early solar prototype of Vishnu in the early Aditya phase.

According to the Bhagavata, in the context of rasa-lila, maya allows devotees to forget that Krishna is God, thus enabling an intimate relationship. Maya that causes attachment to the world, is neither particular to men or women, but in their mutual attraction.

Tamil texts

The basic grammar of the third and final Tamil Sangam is Tholkappiyam composed by Tholkappiyar, who according to critics is referred as Rishi Jamadagni's brother Sthiranadumagni and uncle of Parshurama. He categorically uses a Prakrit (Tamil:Pagatham) Tadbhava Mayakkam, which is the root of the word Maya(m). He says that the entire creation is a blurred flow between State of matter or Pancha Bhutas. This concept of Maya is of the school of Agastya, who was the first Tamil grammarian and the guru of Tholkappiyar.

In Sangam period Tamil literature as well as the later hymns of the Tamil Alvars, Krishna and Narayana are found as Māyon; with other attributed names are such as Mal, Tirumal, Perumal and Mayavan. In the Tamil classics, Durga is referred to by the feminine form of the word, viz., māyol; wherein she is endowed with unlimited creative energy and the great powers of Vishnu, and is hence Vishnu-Maya.

Maya, to Shaiva Siddhanta sub-school of Hinduism, states Hilko Schomerus, is reality and truly existent, and one that exists to "provide Souls with Bhuvana (a world), Bhoga (objects of enjoyment), Tanu (a body) and Karana (organs)".

Schools of Hinduism

Need to understand Māyā

The various schools of Hinduism, particularly those based on naturalism (Vaiśeṣika), rationalism (Samkhya) or ritualism (Mimamsa), questioned and debated what is Maya, and the need to understand Maya. The Vedanta and Yoga schools explained that complete realization of knowledge requires both the understanding of ignorance, doubts and errors, as well as the understanding of invisible principles, incorporeal and the eternal truths. In matters of Self-knowledge, stated Shankara in his commentary on Taittiriya Upanishad, one is faced with the question, "Who is it that is trying to know, and how does he attain Brahman?" It is absurd, states Shankara, to speak of one becoming himself; because "Thou Art That" already. Realizing and removing ignorance is a necessary step, and this can only come from understanding Maya and then looking beyond it.

The need to understand Maya is like the metaphorical need for a road. Only when the country to be reached is distant, states Shankara, that a road must be pointed out. It is a meaningless contradiction to assert, "I am right now in my village, but I need a road to reach my village." It is the confusion, ignorance and illusions that need to be repealed. It is only when the knower sees nothing else but his Self that he can be fearless and permanent. Vivekananda explains the need to understand Maya as follows (abridged),

The Vedas cannot show you Brahman, you are That already. They can only help to take away the veil that hides truth from our eyes. The cessation of ignorance can only come when I know that God and I are one; in other words, identify yourself with Atman, not with human limitations. The idea that we are bound is only an illusion [Maya]. Freedom is inseparable from the nature of the Atman. This is ever pure, ever perfect, ever unchangeable.

— Adi Shankara's commentary on Fourth Vyasa Sutra, Swami Vivekananda

The text Yoga Vasistha explains the need to understand Maya as follows,

Just as when the dirt is removed, the real substance is made manifest; just as when the darkness of the night is dispelled, the objects that were shrouded by the darkness are clearly seen, when ignorance [Maya] is dispelled, truth is realized.

— Vashistha, Yoga Vasiṣṭha

Samkhya school

The early works of Samkhya, the rationalist school of Hinduism, do not identify or directly mention the Maya doctrine. The discussion of Maya theory, calling it into question, appears after the theory gains ground in Vedanta school of Hinduism. Vācaspati Miśra's commentary on the Samkhyakarika, for example, questions the Maya doctrine saying "It is not possible to say that the notion of the phenomenal world being real is false, for there is no evidence to contradict it". Samkhya school steadfastly retained its duality concept of Prakrti and Purusha, both real and distinct, with some texts equating Prakrti to be Maya that is "not illusion, but real", with three Guṇas in different proportions whose changing state of equilibrium defines the perceived reality.

James Ballantyne, in 1885, commented on Kapila's Sánkhya aphorism 5.72 which he translated as, "everything except nature and soul is uneternal". According to Ballantyne, this aphorism states that the mind, ether, etc. in a state of cause (not developed into a product) are called Nature and not Intellect. He adds, that scriptural texts such as Shvetashvatara Upanishad to be stating "He should know Illusion to be Nature and him in whom is Illusion to be the great Lord and the world to be pervaded by portions of him'; since Soul and Nature are also made up of parts, they must be uneternal". However, acknowledges Ballantyne, Edward Gough translates the same verse in Shvetashvatara Upanishad differently, 'Let the sage know that Prakriti is Maya and that Mahesvara is the Mayin, or arch-illusionist. All this shifting world is filled with portions of him'. In continuation of the Samkhya and Upanishadic view, in the Bhagavata philosophy, Maya has been described as 'that which appears even when there is no object like silver in a shell and which does not appear in the atman'; with maya described as the power that creates, maintains and destroys the universe.

Nyaya school

The realism-driven Nyaya school of Hinduism denied that either the world (Prakrti) or the soul (Purusa) are an illusion. Naiyayikas developed theories of illusion, typically using the term Mithya, and stated that illusion is simply flawed cognition, incomplete cognition or the absence of cognition. There is no deception in the reality of Prakrti or Pradhana (creative principle of matter/nature) or Purusa, only confusion or lack of comprehension or lack of cognitive effort, according to Nyaya scholars. To them, illusion has a cause, that rules of reason and proper Pramanas (epistemology) can uncover.

Illusion, state Naiyayikas, involves the projection into current cognition of predicated content from memory (a form of rushing to interpret, judge, conclude). This "projection illusion" is misplaced, and stereotypes something to be what it is not. The insights on theory of illusion by Nyaya scholars were later adopted and applied by Advaita Vedanta scholars.

Yoga school

Maya in Yoga school is the manifested world and implies divine force. Yoga and Maya are two sides of the same coin, states Zimmer, because what is referred to as Maya by living beings who are enveloped by it, is Yoga for the Brahman (Universal Principle, Supreme Soul) whose yogic perfection creates the Maya. Maya is neither illusion nor denial of perceived reality to the Yoga scholars, rather Yoga is a means to perfect the "creative discipline of mind" and "body-mind force" to transform Maya.

The concept of Yoga as power to create Maya has been adopted as a compound word Yogamaya (योगमाया) by the theistic sub-schools of Hinduism. It occurs in various mythologies of the Puranas; for example, Shiva uses his yogamāyā to transform Markendeya's heart in Bhagavata Purana's chapter 12.10, while Krishna counsels Arjuna about yogamāyā in hymn 7.25 of Bhagavad Gita.

Vedanta schools

Maya is a prominent and commonly referred to concept in Vedanta philosophies. It is a complex concept in Vedanta philosophy, and its interpretation varies among different Vedanta schools.

Vishishtadvaita

Vishishtadvaita Vedanta does have a concept that resembles Maya, referred to as Prakriti, and its nature and role within the philosophy differ significantly from the concept of Maya. Prakriti is considered real and is integral to the creative process of the universe within the framework of Vishishtadvaita.

Dvaita

In Dvaita Vedanta, Maya is considered the power or energy of God. While Advaita considers the world to be a manifestation of Maya and thus illusory, Dvaita sees the world as real and a creation of God (Vishnu). Each school's perspective on Maya influences its understanding of the nature of reality and the path to liberation. Unlike the Vishishtadvaita and Advaita schools, the Dvaita school does not attribute the difference between God, souls, and the universe, to maya.

Advaita

In Advaita Vedanta philosophy, there are two realities: Vyavaharika (empirical reality) and Paramarthika (absolute, spiritual reality). Māyā is the empirical reality that entangles consciousness. Māyā has the power to create a bondage to the empirical world, preventing the unveiling of the true, unitary Self – the Cosmic Spirit also known as Brahman. The theory of māyā was developed by the ninth-century Advaita Hindu philosopher Adi Shankara. However, competing theistic Dvaita scholars contested Shankara's theory, and stated that Shankara did not offer a theory of the relationship between Brahman and Māyā. A later Advaita scholar Prakasatman addressed this, by explaining, "Maya and Brahman together constitute the entire universe, just like two kinds of interwoven threads create a fabric. Maya is the manifestation of the world, whereas Brahman, which supports Maya, is the cause of the world."

Vivekananda addressed that to say the world is maya does not mean that it is an illusion, or there is no external world. Māyā is a fact in that it is the appearance of phenomena. Since Brahman is the sole metaphysical truth, Māyā is true in epistemological and empirical sense; however, Māyā is not the metaphysical and spiritual truth. The spiritual truth is the truth forever, while what is empirical truth is only true for now. Since Māyā is the perceived material world, it is true in perception context, but is "untrue" in spiritual context of Brahman. Māyā is not false, it only clouds the inner Self and principles that are real. True Reality includes both Vyavaharika (empirical) and Paramarthika (spiritual), the Māyā and the Brahman. The goal of spiritual enlightenment, state Advaitins, is to realize Brahman, realize the fearless, resplendent Oneness.

Tantra

Tantric devotees do not completely view being in maya as suffering. Being in the world does not cause suffering for a perfect devotee since they experience the divine in all parts of life.

Western interpretation

The English composer Gustav Holst spent many years studying Sanskrit literature, and adapted some of its texts for his music. He explored the concept of maya in his chamber opera, Sāvitri.

Buddhism

See also: Kleshas (Buddhism)

Māyā (Sanskrit; Tibetan wyl.: sgyu) is a Buddhist term translated as "pretense" or "deceit" that is identified as one of the twenty subsidiary unwholesome mental factors within the Mahayana Abhidharma teachings. In this context, it is defined as pretending to exhibit or claiming to have a good quality that one lacks.

The Abhidharma-samuccaya states:

What is deceit? It is a display of what is not a real quality and is associated with both passion-lust (raga) and bewilderment-erring (moha) by being overly attached to wealth and honor. Its function is to provide a basis for a perverse life-style.

Alexander Berzin explains:

Pretension (sgyu) is in the categories of longing desire (raga) and naivety (which is in essence lack of experience) (moha). Because of excessive attachment to our material gain and the respect we receive, and activated by wanting to deceive others, pretension is pretending to exhibit or claiming to have a good quality that we lack.

The Early Buddhist Texts contain some references to illusion, the most well known of which is the Pheṇapiṇḍūpama Sutta in Pali (and with a Chinese Agama parallel at SĀ 265) which states:

Suppose, monks, that a magician (māyākāro) or a magician’s apprentice (māyākārantevāsī) would display a magical illusion (māyaṃ) at a crossroads. A man with good sight would inspect it, ponder, and carefully investigate it, and it would appear to him to be void (rittaka), hollow (tucchaka), coreless (asāraka). For what core (sāro) could there be in a magical illusion (māyāya)? So too, monks, whatever kind of cognition there is, whether past, future, or present, internal or external, gross or subtle, inferior or superior, far or near: a monk inspects it, ponders it, and carefully investigates it, and it would appear to him to be void (rittaka), hollow (tucchaka), coreless (asāraka). For what core (sāro) could there be in cognition?

One sutra in the Āgama collection known as "Mahāsūtras" of the (Mūla)Sarvāstivādin tradition entitled the Māyājāla (Net of Illusion) deals especially with the theme of Maya. This sutra only survives in Tibetan translation and compares the five aggregates with further metaphors for illusion, including: an echo, a reflection in a mirror, a mirage, sense pleasures in a dream and a madman wandering naked.

These texts give the impression that māyā refers to the insubstantial and essence-less nature of things as well as their deceptive, false and vain character.

Later texts such as the Lalitavistara also contain references to illusion:

Complexes have no inner might, are empty in themselves; Rather like the stem of the plantain tree, when one reflects on them, Like an illusion (māyopama) which deludes the mind (citta), Like an empty fist with which a child is teased.

The Salistamba Sutra also puts much emphasis on illusion, describing all dharmas as being “characterized as illusory” and “vain, hollow, without core”. Likewise the Mahāvastu, a highly influential Mahāsāṃghikan text on the life of the Buddha, states that the Buddha “has shown that the aggregates are like a lightning flash, as a bubble, or as the white foam on a wave.”

"For that which we cannot see, feel, smell, touch, or understand, we do not believe. For this, we are merely fools walking on the grounds of great potential with no comprehension of what is."
Buddhist monk quotation

Theravada

In Theravada Buddhism 'Māyā' is the name of the mother of the Buddha as well as a metaphor for the consciousness aggregate (viññana). The Theravada monk Bhikkhu Bodhi considers the Pali Pheṇapiṇḍūpama Sutta “one of the most radical discourses on the empty nature of conditioned phenomena.” Bodhi also cites the Pali commentary on this sutra, the Sāratthappakāsinī (Spk), which states:

Cognition is like a magical illusion (māyā) in the sense that it is insubstantial and cannot be grasped. Cognition is even more transient and fleeting than a magical illusion. For it gives the impression that a person comes and goes, stands and sits, with the same mind, but the mind is different in each of these activities. Cognition deceives the multitude like a magical illusion (māyā).

Likewise, Bhikkhu Katukurunde Nyanananda Thera has written an exposition of the Kàlakàràma Sutta which features the image of a magical illusion as its central metaphor.

Sarvastivada

The Nyānānusāra Śāstra, a Vaibhāṣika response to Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosha, cites the Māyājāla sutra and explains:

“Seeing an illusory object (māyā)”: Although what one apprehends is unreal, nothing more than an illusory sign. If one does not admit this much, then an illusory sign should be non-existent. What is an illusory sign? It is the result of illusion magic. Just as one with higher gnosis can magically create forms, likewise this illusory sign does actually have manifestation and shape. Being produced by illusion magic, it acts as the object of vision. That object which is taken as really existent is in fact ultimately non-existent. Therefore, this [Māyājāla] Sūtra states that it is non-existent, due to the illusory object there is a sign but not substantiality. Being able to beguile and deceive one, it is known as a “deceiver of the eye.”

Mahayana

In Mahayana sutras, illusion is an important theme of the Prajñāpāramitā sutras. Here, the magician's illusion exemplifies how people misunderstand and misperceive reality, which is in fact empty of any essence and cannot be grasped. The Mahayana uses similar metaphors for illusion: magic, a dream, a bubble, a rainbow, lightning, the moon reflected in water, a mirage, and a city of celestial musicians." Understanding that what we experience is less substantial than we believe is intended to serve the purpose of liberation from ignorance, fear, and clinging. Facilitating the attainment of enlightenment as a Buddha completely dedicated to the welfare of all beings. The Prajñaparamita texts also state that all dharmas (phenomena) are like an illusion, not just the five aggregates, but all beings, including Bodhisattvas and even Nirvana. The Prajñaparamita-ratnaguna-samcayagatha (Rgs) states:

This gnosis shows him all beings as like an illusion, Resembling a great crowd of people, conjured up at the crossroads, By a magician, who then cuts off many thousands of heads; He knows this whole living world as a magical creation, and yet remains without fear. Rgs 1:19

And also:

Those who teach Dharma, and those who listen when it is being taught; Those who have won the fruition of a Worthy One, a Solitary Buddha, or a World Savior; And the nirvāṇa obtained by the wise and learned— All is born of illusion—so has the Tathāgata declared. - Rgs 2:5

According to Ven. Dr. Huifeng, what this means is that Bodhisattvas see through all conceptualizations and conceptions, for they are deceptive and illusory, and sever or cut off all these cognitive creations.

Depending on the stage of the practitioner, the magical illusion is experienced differently. In the ordinary state, we get attached to our own mental phenomena, believing they are real, like the audience at a magic show gets attached to the illusion of a beautiful lady. At the next level, called actual relative truth, the beautiful lady appears, but the magician does not get attached. Lastly, at the ultimate level, the Buddha is not affected one way or the other by the illusion. Beyond conceptuality, the Buddha is neither attached nor non-attached. This is the middle way of Buddhism, which explicitly refutes the extremes of both eternalism and nihilism.

Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka philosophy discusses nirmita, or illusion closely related to māyā. In this example, the illusion is a self-awareness that is, like the magical illusion, mistaken. For Nagarjuna, the self is not the organizing command center of experience, as we might think. Actually, it is just one element combined with other factors and strung together in a sequence of causally connected moments in time. As such, the self is not substantially real, but neither can it be shown to be unreal. The continuum of moments, which we mistakenly understand to be a solid, unchanging self, still performs actions and undergoes their results. "As a magician creates a magical illusion by the force of magic, and the illusion produces another illusion, in the same way the agent is a magical illusion and the action done is the illusion created by another illusion." What we experience may be an illusion, but we are living inside the illusion and bear the fruits of our actions there. We undergo the experiences of the illusion. What we do affects what we experience, so it matters. In this example, Nagarjuna uses the magician's illusion to show that the self is not as real as it thinks, yet, to the extent it is inside the illusion, real enough to warrant respecting the ways of the world.

For the Mahayana Buddhist, the self is māyā like a magic show and so are objects in the world. Vasubandhu's Trisvabhavanirdesa, a Mahayana Yogacara "Mind Only" text, discusses the example of the magician who makes a piece of wood appear as an elephant. The audience is looking at a piece of wood but, under the spell of magic, perceives an elephant instead. Instead of believing in the reality of the illusory elephant, we are invited to recognize that multiple factors are involved in creating that perception, including our involvement in dualistic subjectivity, causes and conditions, and the ultimate beyond duality. Recognizing how these factors combine to create what we perceive ordinarily, ultimate reality appears. Perceiving that the elephant is illusory is akin to seeing through the magical illusion, which reveals the dharmadhatu, or ground of being.

Tantra

Buddhist Tantra, a further development of the Mahayana, also makes use of the magician's illusion example in yet another way. In the completion stage of Buddhist Tantra, the practitioner takes on the form of a deity in an illusory body (māyādeha), which is like the magician's illusion. It is made of wind, or prana, and is called illusory because it appears only to other yogis who have also attained the illusory body. The illusory body has the markings and signs of a Buddha. There is an impure and a pure illusory body, depending on the stage of the yogi's practice.

In the Dzogchen tradition the perceived reality is considered literally unreal, in that objects which make-up perceived reality are known as objects within one's mind, and that, as we conceive them, there is no pre-determined object, or assembly of objects in isolation from experience that may be considered the "true" object, or objects. As a prominent contemporary teacher puts it: "In a real sense, all the visions that we see in our lifetime are like a big dream [...]". In this context, the term visions denotes not only visual perceptions, but appearances perceived through all senses, including sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations.

Different schools and traditions in Tibetan Buddhism give different explanations of the mechanism producing the illusion usually called "reality".

The real sky is (knowing) that samsara and nirvana are merely an illusory display.

— Mipham Rinpoche, Quintessential Instructions of Mind, p. 117

Even the illusory nature of apparent phenomena is itself an illusion. Ultimately, the yogi passes beyond a conception of things either existing or not existing, and beyond a conception of either samsara or nirvana. Only then is the yogi abiding in the ultimate reality.^[95]

Jainism

Jainism

Maya, in Jainism, means appearances or deceit that prevents one from Samyaktva (right belief). Maya is one of three causes of failure to reach right belief. The other two are Mithyatva (false belief) and Nidana (hankering after fame and worldly pleasures).

Maya is a closely related concept to Mithyatva, with Maya a source of wrong information while Mithyatva an individual's attitude to knowledge, with relational overlap.

Svetambara Jains classify categories of false belief under Mithyatva into five: Abhigrahika (false belief that is limited to one's own scriptures that one can defend, but refusing to study and analyze other scriptures); Anabhigrahika (false belief that equal respect must be shown to all gods, teachers, scriptures); Abhiniviseka (false belief resulting from pre-conceptions with a lack of discernment and refusal to do so); Samsayika (state of hesitation or uncertainty between various conflicting, inconsistent beliefs); and Anabhogika (innate, default false beliefs that a person has not thought through on one's own).

Digambara Jains classify categories of false belief under Mithyatva into seven: Ekantika (absolute, one sided false belief), Samsayika (uncertainty, doubt whether a course is right or wrong, unsettled belief, skepticism), Vainayika (false belief that all gods, gurus and scriptures are alike, without critical examination), Grhita (false belief derived purely from habits or default, no self-analysis), Viparita (false belief that true is false, false is true, everything is relative or acceptable), Naisargika (false belief that all living beings are devoid of consciousness and cannot discern right from wrong), Mudha-drsti (false belief that violence and anger can tarnish or damage thoughts, divine, guru or dharma).

Māyā (deceit) is also considered one of four Kaṣaya (faulty passion, a trigger for actions) in Jain philosophy. The other three are Krodha (anger), Māna (pride) and Lobha (greed). The ancient Jain texts recommend that one must subdue these four faults, as they are source of bondage, attachment and non-spiritual passions.

When he wishes that which is good for him, he should get rid of the four faults — Krodha, Māna, Māyā and Lobha — which increase evil. Anger and pride when not suppressed, and deceit and greed when arising: all these four black passions water the roots of re-birth.

— Ārya Sayyambhava, Daśavaikālika sūtra, 8:36–39

Sikhism

In Sikhism, the world is regarded as both transitory and relatively real. God is viewed as the only reality, but within God exist both conscious souls and nonconscious objects; these created objects are also real. Natural phenomena are real but the effects they generate are unreal. māyā is as the events are real yet māyā (Gurmukhi: ਮਾਇਆ) is not as the effects are unreal. Sikhism believes that people are trapped in the world because of five vices: lust, anger, greed, attachment, and ego. Maya enables these five vices and makes a person think the physical world is "real," whereas, the goal of Sikhism is to rid the self of them. Consider the following example: In the moonless night, a rope lying on the ground may be mistaken for a snake. We know that the rope alone is real, not the snake. However, the failure to perceive the rope gives rise to the false perception of the snake. Once the darkness is removed, the rope alone remains; the snake disappears.

• Sakti adher jevarhee bhram chookaa nihchal siv ghari vaasaa.
  In the darkness of māyā, I mistook the rope for the snake, but that is over, and now I dwell in the eternal home of the Lord.
  (Sri Guru Granth Sahib 332).
• Raaj bhuiang prasang jaise hahi ab kashu maram janaaiaa.
  Like the story of the rope mistaken for a snake, the mystery has now been explained to me. Like the many bracelets, which I mistakenly thought were gold; now, I do not say what I said then. (Sri Guru Granth Sahib 658).

In some mythologies the symbol of the snake was associated with money, and māyā in modern Punjabi refers to money. However, in the Guru Granth Sahib māyā refers to the "grand illusion" of materialism. From this māyā all other evils are born, but by understanding the nature of māyā a person begins to approach spirituality.

• Janam baritha jāṯ rang mā▫i▫ā kai. ||1|| rahā▫o.
  You are squandering this life uselessly in the love of māyā.
  Sri Guru Granth Sahib M.5 Guru Arjan Dev ANG 12

The teachings of the Sikh Gurus push the idea of seva (selfless service) and simran (prayer, meditation, or remembering one's true death). The depths of these two concepts and the core of Sikhism comes from sangat (congregation): by joining the congregation of true saints one is saved. By contrast, most people are believed to suffer from the false consciousness of materialism, as described in the following extracts from the Guru Granth Sahib:

• Mā▫i▫ā mohi visāri▫ā jagaṯ piṯā parṯipāl.
  In attachment to māyā, they have forgotten the Father, the Cherisher of the World.
  Sri Guru Granth Sahib M3 Guru Amar Das ANG 30
• Ih sarīr mā▫i▫ā kā puṯlā vicẖ ha▫umai ḏustī pā▫ī.
  This body is the puppet of māyā. The evil of egotism is within it.
  Sri Guru Granth Sahib M3 Guru Amar Das
• Bābā mā▫i▫ā bẖaram bẖulā▫e.
  O Baba, māyā deceives with its illusion.
  Sri Guru Granth Sahib M1 Guru Nanak Dev ANG 60