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Updated: June 14, 2025
In a vague way, however, Buddhism holds that in some way this Unknowable, or a part thereof, becomes entangled in Maya or Illusion, through Avidya or Ignorance, Law, Necessity, or perhaps something in the nature of a Mistake.
The doctrine of deliverance that Buddha preached was the freedom from the thraldom of Avidya. Avidya is the ignorance that darkens our consciousness, and tends to limit it within the boundaries of our personal self.
In agreement with the use made of this passage by the Purvapakshin, vijnana must here be understood in the sense of avidya. Vijnanasabdena vividham jnayate-neneti karanavyutpattya-vidya-bhidhiyate. Sru. The distinction is illustrated by the different views Perception and Inference cause us to take of the nature of the flame of the lamp.
It is this Avidya, this ignorance, this limiting of consciousness that creates the hard separateness of the ego, and thus becomes the source of all pride and greed and cruelty incidental to self-seeking. When a man sleeps he is shut up within the narrow activities of his physical life. He lives, but he knows not the varied relations of his life to his surroundings, therefore he knows not himself.
Nor may you plead that what perception tells us in such cases is contradicted by Scripture; for as, according to you, Scripture itself is an effect, and hence of the essence of avidya, it is in no better case than the instances quoted.
For that all bodies are the fictitious creations of avidya is not true; since that which is not sublated by valid means of proof must be held to be real.
Freed as He is from limitations of every kind such as the possession of attributes would imply, he suffers himself to be invested with Avidya and awakened to Consciousness, Kesava of Supreme Soul creates all things. In Him rests this wondrous universe in its entirety."
For the jiva., in so far as free from avidya, is neither all-knowing, nor the Lord of all, nor the cause of all, nor the Self of all, nor the ruler of all it in fact possesses none of those characteristics on which the scriptural texts found the difference of the released soul; for according to the view in question all those attributes are the mere figment of Nescience.
Again, Knowledge has been said to be Unmanifest and the Object of knowledge to be that which transcends the four and twenty. Once more, Knowledge has been said to be Unmanifest, and the Knower is that which transcends the four and twenty. I have now told thee what is truly the import of Vidya and Avidya.
Let us then define avidya as the cause of a disadvantageous cognition of unreal things. Maya then, as not being the cause of such a disadvantageous cognition on Brahman's part, cannot be of the nature of avidya! Well, if it were so, what harm would there be?
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