Maya
माया (māyā)
The world's power of appearance - not a lie, but the artistry by which the one shows up as many. Read in English
माया — जगत की प्रकट होने की शक्ति; झूठ नहीं, बल्कि वह कला जिससे एक अनेक रूपों में दिखता है।
Maya is popularly rendered illusion, which makes the teaching sound like a conspiracy theory about reality. The older senses are richer: maya is creative power, artistry, measure - the capacity by which the unmanifest takes on convincing form.
Vedanta's rope-and-snake example is precise about the mechanics: at dusk a rope is mistaken for a snake, and the fear is real even though the snake is not. Maya names that gap - not the absence of the rope, but the confident misreading of it.
The practical bite is psychological. Most suffering runs through appearances taken as final: the insult replayed, the imagined future dreaded. To practice with maya is to hold appearances a degree more lightly - to check, before reacting, whether one is handling rope or snake.