Maya, Arjava, and the Discipline of Confession

Jain ethical literature pairs maya with its named opposite, arjava, straightforwardness, one of the ten virtues, the dasa lakshana dharma, observed with particular attention during the Paryushana festival, when Jain communities set aside specific days to reflect on each of the ten in turn. Arjava is defined not simply as honesty in speech but as a more thoroughgoing consistency between inner intention and outward action, since Jain commentary treats maya as capable of operating even where no literal lie is spoken, as when a person's conduct is technically truthful but arranged to create a false impression, a distinction the tradition takes seriously because it closes an obvious loophole a narrower definition of deceit would leave open.

The Tattvartha Sutra's four degree grading of intensity applies to maya as it does to the other three kashayas, and Jaini notes that maya's grading interacts specifically with the practice of pratikramana, ritual confession, since a deceit compounded by further deceit in the act of confessing it, concealing the true extent of a fault even while nominally confessing to it, is treated in monastic manuals as a distinctly serious compounding of the original passion, the kashaya folding back on the very mechanism meant to dissolve it.