A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

"What"154 MAYA AND ILLUSION.her soul, her life, is in that child. The child grows, be*comes big, and perchance becomes a blackguard and a brute,kicks her and beats her every day ;and yet the motherclings on to the child, and when her reason awakes shecovers itup with the idea of love. She little thinks it isnot love, it is something which has got hold of her nerves,she cannot shake it off ;however she may try, she cannotshake off the bondage she has and this is maya. We areall after the Golden Fleece. Every one of us thinks thatthis will be ours, but very few of them are in the world.Every reasonable man sees that the chance isperhaps onein twenty millions for this golden fleece, yet every onemust struggle for it and the majority never get anything.And this ismaya. Death is stalking day and night overthis earth of ours, but at the same time we always believethat we shall live eternally. A question was once askedof King Yudhisthira,is the most wonderful thingon this earth ?" And the king replied, Every day peopleare dying around us, and yet men think they will neverdie." And this ismaya. This tremendous contradictionin our intellect, in our knowledge, in our life, in our facts,everywhere this tremendous amount of contradiction,pleasure succeeding pain, and pain pleasure.A reformerarises and wants to remedy the evils that are existingin a certain nation ;arid before they have been remedied,twenty thousand evils arise in another corner. It is an oldhouse that is falling ; patch it up in one place, the ruin extends to another corner. In India our reformers cry andpreach against the evils which enforced widowhood bringsto Indian women. In the West non-marriageis the greatevil. Help the unmarried on one side ; they are suffering.Help the widows 011 the other ; they are suffering. Likethe old rheumatism in the body, drive it from the head and