Maya

As I like to define, Maya is the false understanding that happiness lies outside, and what is on the outside but pleasure (kama, be it through woman or food or entertainment or name/fame, power, any thing that gives one pleasure) and how can one “obtain” that pleausre but through artha (wealth defined broadly or the resources that hep you acquire the objects of pleasure).

Hence, Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj have said, “The world is a drama of woman/man (kama) and gold (artha)”.

Now, why does desire for the outside things arise? It is because we have the ignorance that we are the body-mind, which makes us feel finite etc.

So, ultimately, the search for happiness on the outside succeeds sometimes when we are experiencing the period of good karma and we fail when the period of bad karma starts.

Only when we face extreme frustration in getting happiness from the outside (and hence suffer) do our spiritual questions start to take root.

That is why Ramana Maharshi remarked once, “Suffering is the way for realization of God.”

I leave it to you to understand why Buddha said, “The cause of suffering is desire” and NOT “The cause of suffering is the lack of the desired person/pleasure/object.”