Spoken by Supreme Master Ching Hai
Four-day International Retreat, Washington DC, USA
December 25, 1997 (Originally in English)

Q:Can you explain about Maya, please?

M: Oh, No! I'd rather explain about God. Maya is nothing but our own laziness. We give up, we give in, and we don't want to strive. It's too hard. It's too long. It's too difficult -- all these kinds of things. We don't worry about it. There are two forces within us. One says, "You have to do what is good." The other says, "Oh, why bother. Just sleep!" That's Maya. There's no outside Maya. It's in us. So fight with it yourself. But of course, there are some outside influences, like the place or the people we interact with, and the atmosphere which people create, and then we tumble in, and we get affected and we are affected by that, too. But it all comes down to our laziness; we don't want to struggle to get out of it. We don't want to better ourselves. We don't want to think that we are strong.

You should never give up, but just continue and then you will get the reward, really! You will feel better after you achieve something, after you struggle and stand up for yourself. It's nothing impossible. We might be miserable. We might cry, but stand up; we must, in the end. It's our own laziness. No Maya can beat us, really. Because we are saints, we are Gods incarnated. (Applause)

Maya is just a test, an examination that we have to take now and again in the school of life. There is no school here except us training ourselves. Every situation is for us to be stronger. There's no Maya, just tests! We test ourselves. Before we came down into this world, we vowed to do this, do that and do others. But there are also obstacles in our way, so that we will know what we can do, how strong we are, how determined. So there is no Maya; don't worry about it! It's just us! Maya is us!

Q:Relating to what you just said, sometimes a test gets very difficult, and I feel like I have to be very strong and break through obstacles. And then sometimes people say to me, "No, no, take it easy! God will do it." And I should just relax and let it happen. So, how do you know the balance between what you should do and how much you should relax?

M: Okay. Do your best, and the rest God does. (Applause.) After you do your best, then Hes has to do the rest. That's it. And if you succeed already, fine! Then you should be proud and happy. If you have done your best already, there's nothing else you can do. It's not always leaving it to God, of course, because you are here to do things, to learn your own strength. You can always leave it to God, too, then do nothing. But how do you live a life doing nothing? Would you like that? No, it would be too boring. So there are challenges for you to overcome. So, to do it is for you, to do or not to do, to be or not to be.