Though the body is needed for sadhana, one should not identify with it. We should make good use of it, and look after it well, but we should not pay too much attention to it.
There are so many thoughts in the mind. Thought after
thought after thought, they never stop. But there is one thought that is continuous,
though it is mostly subconscious: ‘I am the body.’ This is the string on which
all other thoughts are threaded. Once we identify ourselves with the body by
thinking this thought, maya follows. It also follows that if we cease to
identify ourselves with the body, maya will not affect us anymore.
Maya is fundamentally non-existent. Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi
said that maya literally means ‘that which is not’. It is unreal because everything
that maya produces is an outgrowth of a wrong idea. It is a consequence of
taking something to be true that is not really true. How can something that is
not real produce something that is real? If a barren woman says that she has been
beaten by her son, or that she has been injured by the horns of a hare, we
would rightly take her to be deluded. Something that does not exist cannot be
the cause of suffering or of anything else.
Maya may appear to be real, to have a real existence, but
this is a false appearance. The truth is: it is not real; it has no existence at
all.
How to get rid of this ‘I am the body’ feeling and of the
maya that is produced by it? It goes when there is saman bhava, the equanimity
or equality of outlook that leaves one unaffected by extreme opposites such as
happiness and unhappiness, pleasure and pain. When saman bhava is attained, the
idea ‘I am the body’ is no longer present, and maya is transcended.