Why Does Anything Exist?

We can admit it: the question is almost embarrassing. It feels childlike, unanswerable, a rabbit hole of infinite regress. And yet, the mind can’t help itself. To be conscious is to wonder at its own condition, and the most persistent wonder of all is: Why does anything exist at all?

Vedanta calls this the anirvachaniya question—the indescribable one. For just as a mirage disappears when you look for its source, the question “why is there creation?” collapses when examined. But before we arrive at that collapse, let’s walk through the terrain.

The Inscrutability of Maya

Maya is called anirvachaniya—neither real nor unreal, neither finite nor infinite. Like smoke in the air, you can’t grasp it in your hands, yet it fills your vision. To ask “why maya?” is like asking “where exactly is the rainbow?” The very structure of the question presupposes solidity where there is only appearance.

Shankara himself emphasizes this. From the standpoint of sat-chit-ananda, only Brahman is. The world has no independent existence. To ask “why” assumes that something separate from Brahman really came into existence. Vedanta says this never happens. What we call “the world” is nothing but Brahman appearing in varied forms. When that is understood, the sense of a separate world drops away. The contradiction disappears: creation is only an appearance, not an actual event.

Vedanta is able to explain the what of maya—its nature, how it works, and its relationship to absolute reality. But it does not veer into the why.

Maya cannot be separated from consciousness, just as you cannot separate the fire’s power to burn from its power to illumine. They co-exist, yet are not the same. Consciousness is the ground of being: attributeless, actionless, ever-present. Maya, on the other hand, has attributes—it is the stuff of matter, the macrocosmic causal body, the root of ignorance. But it is dependent on consciousness.

Therefore maya is not sat (real), because it comes and goes with cycles of creation and cannot exist independently. Nor is it asat (non-real), because its effects are undeniably experienced. The best we can say is that maya is mithya—apparently real, conditionally existent.

This distinction fascinates scientists too, even if they don’t use the word maya. Their endless probing into the origins of the universe is another way of circling the inscrutable. But Vedanta warns against falling into the rabbit hole of “why.” Analyzing maya's origin gets us nowhere, because maya is like a dream. And to wake from a dream, you don’t obsess about its characters and scenery. You simply wake up.

Avidya: Beginningless, Yet Not Endless

Vedanta says ignorance (avidya) is anadi—beginningless—but not eternal. It veils reality and projects duality. At the cosmic level this is maya, at the individual level it is avidya.

The root of error is misidentification: mistaking the impermanent for the eternal, the finite for the infinite. The “I” latches onto body, mind, ego, and forgets its true nature as limitless awareness.

Why is this ignorance here? Shankara and later teachers answer indirectly: ignorance isn’t explained, it is removed. Its very nature is to masquerade without reason. A dream doesn’t need a cause to appear; it only needs to be woken from.

Gaudapada offers a sharp warning: once you accept that the world has truly originated, you will never stop asking why. The hunt for causes (hetu-phala-avesha) is itself samsara—the endless cycle of explanations upon explanations.

Moksha, liberation, is when the mind gives up the compulsive “why” and rests in the fact of awareness itself. In other words, samsara is asking “why,” and moksha is not needing to.

Tradition sometimes softens the paradox with the language of play. Creation is lila—divine sport. But let's be clear: if Ishvara needed sport, He would be restless, incomplete, or lonely—which is absurd. Better to say: creation occurs by the force of prakriti alone. Just as thoughts arise unbidden in the mind, so too does the cosmos appear. Not willed, not purposed, but simply by the nature of manifestation.

The Big Picture

The gunas—rajas, tamas, sattva—sustain the field of duality. Opposites are necessary for the “game” to run at all. Karma unfolds within this field in ways no individual can fully comprehend. Even the sages confess perplexity.

Suffering, then, isn’t random. It becomes the grit that drives inquiry. Without avidya, no individuality; without individuality, no seeking; without seeking, no realization. As strange as it sounds, ignorance serves as the stage upon which liberation is enacted.

Ultimately, the question “Why does anything exist?” is illegitimate. It presupposes a second thing besides Brahman. From the Self’s standpoint, there is no creation at all (ajativada).

Thus, Vedanta redirects us: don’t ask why the play? Ask who am I, really, in relation to it? As Shankara distills:

Brahma satyam. Jagan mithyā. Jīvo brahmaiva nāparaḥ.

"Brahman alone is real. The world is an apparent reality. The individual is none other than Brahman."

From the individual's angle, existence is bizarre, wondrous, even absurd. From the Self’s angle, nothing ever happened. The mind remains unsatisfied because it still wants an origin story. But awareness needs no story.

The dream ends not when the dream is explained, but when the dreamer wakes.