I think I’ve found religion. For years, I thought that it was impossible for a codified religion to express my spirituality and my beliefs about the cosmos. Flame and I started visiting different religious services, but more as an exercise in comparative diversity than a hope for a new home. We’d also started holding our own Full Moon services, where we sing and pray and study together, and I did New Moon services where I prayed and studied alone. Two nights ago was the New Moon, and I took a little booklet with me, Essence of World Religions, composed by a friend of a Jain friend of mine, and studied the first section: Hinduism.

It turns out that I am a Hinduist! I completely grok their belief in a pervasive God which is the universe and also is us, but also of their multitude of gods and openness to all spiritualities, and their concepts of Karma and reincarnation and the unendingness of existence and the illusion of the world. I particularly approve of their four-fold approach to nirvana, by any or all of yoga and meditation, love and devotion, selfless service, and knowledge and wisdom.

What I do not understand is why we want to escape Maya and samsara, the illusion of the world and the cycle of reincarnation.

We have each in fact gone through considerable effort to create Maya, and for very good reasons:

• To Keep us Entertained: We will exist forever. Let’s have something to do.
• For Aesthetics: Because simplicity mixed with complexity is more beautiful than simplicity alone.
• As a Moral Playground We want a world, so we can do good and be confronted with moral dilemmas.
• To Explore the boundaries of our own minds and learn from others.

Maya is the natural overflowing of the potential we have as God, and while it alienates us from God and each other, it also makes it possible to use that potential. Specifically, each of the reasons that we created Maya matches up with an approach to nirvana: the practices of the world keep us entertained, and practice in spirituality is called yoga; the beauties of the world open our eyes and minds to love; the moral conflicts of the world give us opportunities to do good; and learning and exploration are the roads to knowledge and wisdom.

That is, we created Maya in order to forever seek enlightenment. Let’s focus on the process and not the product, and forget about trying to get rid of the best game ever invented.