Mithyā
Mithyā · mithyā, “unreal, false”
Grammar: indeclinable used as an adjective and noun: “falsely, unreal”; mithyā-bhūta, “become unreal”, mithyābhimāna, “false identification”.
Meaning: what appears but is not ultimately real: what has a beginning and an end, seen only while ajñāna lasts. The Bhāgavata Purāṇa calls the world of duality, the body, ahaṅkāra and saṃsāra mithyā, and the ātmā alone satya (real).
In the scriptures: the word runs through the teachings of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa.
What is mithyā, and how it is known. Śrī Kṛshṇa teaches Uddhava that four pramāṇas show the world of duality to be mithyā: the śruti, “neha nānāsti kiñcana”, “there is no manifoldness here at all”; pratyaksha, for nothing comes into experience other than caitanya; aitihya, the well-known teaching of the great ones; and anumāna, “the world is mithyā because it is seen”. So the man of discernment must become detached from the world of duality (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 11, Chapter 19). Again he says: “Duality is unreal. In it, what is auspicious and what is inauspicious? Whatever is imagined by the mind and spoken by speech is untrue.” What did not exist before birth and will not exist after death does not exist now either; though it is seen, it is mithyā. This is known by perception (“what exists is the clay, not the pot”), by inference (“this world is unreal, because it has a beginning and an end, like a pot”), by the Veda, and by one’s own experience, and the jñānī who knows it moves in the world unattached (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 11, Chapter 28).
Saṃsāra like a dream. Bhagavān Kapila teaches Devahūti that saṃsāra in the form of birth and death is mithyā; yet for the jīva who keeps thinking of bhogas the wandering does not stop, as the danger seen in a dream and its sorrow do not stop while the dream lasts (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 3, Chapter 27). For the jñānī, he says, even ahaṅkāra, once thought the enjoyer, is known to be mithyā, and the body too is mithyā, like a thing in a dream (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 3, Chapter 28). Nārada Maharshi tells Prācīnabarhis the same: the ātmā alone is satya and the whole world is mithyā, yet through ajñāna saṃsāra arises for the jīva, and only nishkāma bhakti to Śrī Hari can remove ajñāna and turn saṃsāra back (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 4, Chapter 29).
The snake in the rope. Sanatkumāra teaches Pṛthu that though there is no snake in a rope, through ajñāna it appears; once the truth is known, the snake is seen no more. So the world of effect and cause does not truly exist in the Paramātmā but appears to, and when discrimination arises it is found to be mithyā (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 4, Chapter 22).
The body and the earth. Jaḍabharata teaches King Rahūgaṇa that the body is mithyā, born of the three guṇas and made of the five elements, and that through avidyā the jīva takes it and does karmas again (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 5, Chapter 10). In the chapter that establishes that the world is mithyā (jagan-mithyātva-nirūpaṇa) he says that even the atoms of earth are imagined by the mind through ignorance, and, gathered together, appear as a single false form called pṛthivī (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 5, Chapter 12).
Like a city in the sky. Aṅgiras Maharshi, who had come with Nārada Maharshi, consoles King Citraketu of Śūrasena in his grief for his son: wife, house, riches, the pleasures of the senses, kingdom, army, treasury, servants, ministers and friends are all mithyā, like a gandharva-nagara (a city imagined in the sky), a dream, indrajāla or the play of imagination; they leave a man only grief, delusion, fear and sorrow (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 6, Chapter 15).
Like a reflection and a shadow. Nārada Maharshi teaches Yudhishṭhira that a reflection is not real, yet seems real; so the difference in the world is against reason, pramāṇa and experience, yet the undiscerning take it as real. The body and the things made of the five elements are mithyā like a shadow: neither a combination nor a modification of the elements, neither apart from them nor joined with them (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 7, Chapter 15).
Related terms: Satya · Māyā · Avidyā · Ajñāna · Dvaita · Adhyāsa
Sources
- Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 3, Chapters 27–28; Skandha 4, Chapters 22, 29; Skandha 5, Chapters 10, 12; Skandha 6, Chapter 15; Skandha 7, Chapter 15; Skandha 11, Chapters 19, 28