~ Martin Buber
In a prior essay
("Many Worlds, Many Entries") on the Additional Content page of this website, I
mentioned two mottos that arose during one of our "Purpose Games": "Appreciate the universe (in both senses of the word
"appreciate"—to increase, to understand)," and "Realize all
possibilities (in both senses of the word "realize"—to make real,
actualize; to understand)." In that essay, these were presented in the
context of the Principle of Plenitude:
that the Universe is very full, that any thing that might exist actually does
exist, that the Universe and Nature are extremely generous in their
productions, that the world at large is—in the words of the Neoplatonist
Plotinus—"that fountain ever on." The principle is not unlike physicist Freeman
Dyson's Principle of Maximum Diversity:
that the laws of nature, and the initial conditions at the
beginning of time, are such as to make the universe as full and as interesting
as possible.
Here, I introduce those two mottos
again—this time, in the context of play and, more specifically, in the context
of Hinduism's concept of Lila, a
Sanskrit term that might be translated as "play," "pastime," "game," or
"sport." The flavor of Lila, as the
creative cosmic play of the divine absolute (Brahman), is conveyed well by the following quotations:
Brahman is full of all
perfections. And to say that Brahman
has some purpose in creating the world will mean that it wants to attain
through the process of creation something which it has not. And that is
impossible. Hence, there can be no purpose of Brahman in creating the world. The world is a mere spontaneous
creation of Brahman. It is a Lila, or sport, of Brahman. It is created out of Bliss, by Bliss and for Bliss. Lila indicates a spontaneous sportive
activity of Brahman as distinguished
from a self-conscious volitional effort. The concept of Lila signifies freedom as distinguished from necessity. (Misra, 1957/1998)
The relation of Purusa to Prakrti—the unfolding force of nature—becomes here a relation of
male to female. . . . The basic cosmogonic motif of an unfolding or flowering cosmos is expressed here specifically in the
relation of male to female, as well as in terms of consciousness and intentionality
(in the concept of lila as the divine
play of male and female). (Zimmer & Campbell, 1969)
The Vendantic yogi never
tires of stating that kaivalya,
'isolation-integration,' can be attained only by turning away from the
distracting allure of the world and worshiping with single-pointed attention
the formless Brahman-Atman; to the
Tantric, however—as to the normal child of the world—this notion seems
pathological, the wrong-headed effect of a certain malady of intellect. . . .
'I like eating sugar,' as Ramprasad said, 'but I have no desire to become sugar.' Let those who suffer from the
toils of samsara seek release: the
perfect devotee does not suffer; for he can both visualize and experience life
and the universe as the revelation of that Supreme Divine Force (shakti)
with which he is in love, the all-comprehensive Divine Being in its cosmic
aspect of playful, aimless display (lila)—which
precipitates pain as well as joy, but in its bliss transcends them both.
(Bastin, 2002)
Suffering, struggle, loss, and
gain are part of the natural realm, the samsaric
realm, just as they are inherent to any sport or game. The possibility of
suffering and defeat in sports enhances the pleasure of the fans; similarly,
suffering, death and loss in samsara
enhance the pleasure of the Lord, the Ultimate Fan of the lila-vibhuti, the realm of
sport. (Nelson, 1998)
The basic recurring theme in
Hindu mythology is the creation of the world by the self-sacrifice of God -
'sacrifice' in the original sense of 'making sacred'—whereby God becomes the
world which, in the end, becomes again God. This creative activity of the
Divine is called lila, the play of
God, and the world is seen as the stage of the divine play. Like most of Hindu
mythology, the myth of lila has a
strong magical flavour. Brahman is
the great magician who transforms himself into the world and he performs this
feat with his 'magic creative power', which is the original meaning of maya in the Rig Veda. The word maya—one
of the most important terms in Indian philosophy—has changed its meaning over
the centuries. From the might, or power, of the divine actor and magician, it
came to signify the psychological state of anybody under the spell of the magic
play. As long as we confuse the myriad forms of the divine lila with reality, without perceiving the unity of Brahman underlying all these forms, we
are under the spell of maya.
Maya,
therefore, does not mean that the world is an illusion, as is often wrongly
stated. The illusion merely lies in our point of view, if we think that the
shapes and structures, things and events, around us are realities of nature,
instead of realizing that they are concepts of our measuring and categorizing
minds. Maya is the illusion of taking
these concepts for reality, of confusing the map with the territory.
In the Hindu view of nature, then, all
forms are relative, fluid and ever-changing maya,
conjured up by the great magician of the divine play.
The world of maya changes
continuously, because the divine lila
is a rhythmic, dynamic play. The dynamic force of the play is karma, another important concept of
Indian thought. Karma means 'action'.
It is the active principle of the play, the total universe in action, where
everything is dynamically connected with everything else. In the words of the Gita 'Karma is the force of creation, wherefrom all things have their
life.' (Capra, 1975, pp. 87-88)It is interesting that Hindus,
when they speak of the creation of the universe do not call it the work of God,
they call it the play of God, the Vishnu lila,
lila meaning play. And they look upon
the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind
of dance--lila perhaps being somewhat
related to our word lilt. (Watts, 1997)In order to arouse and develop
this sympathy and fellow-feeling with nature Tagore founded a school at
Santiniketan in his native Bengal in which the pupils, through being in
constant contact with natural things, were to be led to the apprehension of the
divine. Under his affectionate care work was made to resemble play and every
day was thus a holiday, that is, a holy day. He wished his pupils to be like
God whose work is at the same time his play—his karma is his lila—effortless
effort expected in joy. (Zaehner, 1962, p. 190)There is an old Sanskrit
word, Lila (Leela), which means play. Richer than our word, it means divine
play, the play of creation and destruction and re-creation, the folding and
unfolding of the cosmos. Lila, free
and deep, is both delight and enjoyment of this moment, and the play of God. It
also means love. Lila may be the
simplest thing there is---spontaneous, childish, disarming. But as we grow and
experience the complexities of life, it may also be the most difficult and hard
won achievement imaginable, and its coming to fruition is a kind of homecoming
to our true selves. (Nachmanovitch, 1990, p. 1)
I sometimes have remarked that if I were
stranded on a desert island and could have only one book with me, that book
would be a thick dictionary. This is because I always have maintained that one
can learn a great deal—about the world and about human behavior—simply by
studying the origins, meanings, and interrelationships of words. For example,
even a cursory examination of various English words based on the Latin roots
for play—the noun ludus and the verb ludere—can reveal much about the nature
of both lila and maya. The following are some examples. Note how nicely these seven
English words reflect aspects of lila
and maya, play and "illusion":Allude – to play with, to
make indirect reference, refer (point to Brahman)Allusion - indirect
reference, hint Elude - avoid adroitly,
evade, to escape the perception understanding, or grasp ofElusive - evade grasp or
pursuit, hard to identify or comprehendElusion - deceptionLudicrous – amusing or
laughable through obvious absurdity, incongruity, exaggeration, or
eccentricity; meriting derisive laughter or scorn as absurdly inept, false, or
foolishIllusion – that which
deceives misleads, or is misapprehended (its root means play and mocking)Our understanding can be enhanced even further
by considering additional meanings of the two Latin roots (ludus, ludere)
themselves, and their derivatives:Ludus – play, game, sport,
pastime, trifle, jest, joke, a training establishment, schoolLudi – public games or
spectaclesLudum dare – to give free play
toLudere – to play, to sport,
to play at, to play with, to imitate, to banter, to deceive, to deludeKeys to the understanding of lila are the ideas of play, a play,
performance, magical creation, illusion, misapprehension, effortlessness, the
realm of appearances and their underlying substratum, transience and
permanence. Also important to understanding lila
is the essential complementarity of all of Nature's Ten Thousand Things, a
recognition of the necessary co-occurrence of the this and its contrary that:
that there can be no light without darkness, no good without evil, no such
thing as a stick with only one end or a coin with only one side.
In The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing
Who You Are, which I
highly recommend, Alan Watts presents the following delightful tale about
divine play:It's . . . like the
game of hide-and-seek, because it's always fun to find new ways of hiding, and
to seek for someone who doesn't always hide in the same place. God
also likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he
has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by
pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He
pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals,
all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange
and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these
are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear. Now
when God plays hide and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that
it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself. But that's
the whole fun of it—just what he wanted to do. He doesn't want to find himself
too quickly, for that would spoil the game. That is why it is so difficult for
you and me to find out that we are God in disguise, pretending not to be
himself. But when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will wake up,
stop pretending, and remember that we are all one single Self—the God who is
all that there is and who lives for ever and ever. . . . God
is the Self of the world, but you can't see God for the same reason that,
without a mirror, you can't see your own eyes, and you certainly can't bite
your own teeth or look inside your head. Your self is that cleverly hidden
because it is God hiding. You
may ask why God sometimes hides in the form of horrible people, or pretends to
be people who suffer great disease and pain. Remember, first, that he isn't
really doing this to anyone but himself. Remember, too, that in almost all the
stories you enjoy there have to be bad people as well as good people, for the
thrill of the tale is to find out how the good people will get the better of
the bad. It's the same as when we play cards. At the beginning of the game we
shuffle them all into a mess, which is like the bad things in the world, but
the point of the game is to put the mess into good order, and the one who does
it best is the winner. Then we shuffle the cards once more and play again, and
so it goes with the world. (Watts, 1989, pp. 11-14)[Note: For a more
complete version of this wonderful tale by Alan Watts, click here.]In a later section of the book, Watts writes more about play and lila:To play so as to be relaxed and
refreshed for work is not to play, and no work is well and finely done unless
it, too, is a form of play. To
be released from the "You must survive" double-bind is to see
that life is at root playing. The difficulty in understanding this is that the
idea of "play" has two distinct meanings which are often confused. On
the one hand, to do something only or merely in play, is to be
trivial and insincere, and here we should use the word "toying"
instead of "playing." . . . On the other hand, there is a form of playing
which is not trivial at all, as when Segovia plays the guitar or Sir Laurence
Olivier plays the part of Hamlet, or, obviously, when someone plays the organ
in church. In this sense of the word Saint Gregory Nazianzen could say of the
Logos, the creative wisdom of God:For the Logos on high plays, stirring the whole cosmos back and
forth, as he wills, into shapes of every kind.And, at the other end of the
earth, the Japanese Zen master Hakuin:In singing and dancing is the
voice of the Law.So,
too, in the Vedanta the whole world is seen as the lila and the maya of
the Self, the first word meaning "play" and the second having the
complex sense of illusion (from the Latin ludere, to play), magic,
creative power, art, and measuring—as when one dances or draws a design to a
certain measure. From this point of view the universe in general and playing in
particular are, in a special sense, "meaningless": that is, they do
not—like words and symbols—signify or point to something beyond themselves,
just as a Mozart sonata conveys no moral or social message and does not try to
suggest the natural sounds of wind, thunder, or birdsong. (Watts, 1969, pp.
118-119)
A Recognition of the Importance of Play?It may be useful
for me to share an experience of many years ago. I was fixing breakfast, and
the television was on in the background. As I listened to what was being
discussed on the TV, an interesting thought arose. I thought of the great
(excessive?) amount of attention and money associated with three
occupations—sports, acting/performing, and fiction writing ("best sellers").
Think of the vast media attention, celebrity, and outrageously high pay that certain sports figures, actors, performers, and some fiction writers (the "successful"
ones) receive. Think of this, especially, in comparison with what is received
by educators, service providers, scientists, scholars, and those engaged in
other very useful and essential occupations. It occurred to me that this great
attention and pay could be a kind of unconscious recognition, within certain
societies and at certain times, of the great importance of play, of lila—for play is what these greatly compensated individuals are doing in
their "work."
My purpose in
writing this short essay was to provide merely a taste of some of the special
meanings and other aspects of lila.
For more nourishing treatments, the interested reader can consult the sources
cited above, as well as additional works by Sax (1995) and Laude (2005).
References
Bastin, R. (2002). The domain of constant excess: Plural worship
at the Munnesvaram temples in Sri Lanka. New York: Berghahn Books.
Capra, F. (1975). The tao of physics. Boulder, CO:
Shambhala Publications.
Laude, P. (2005). Divine play, sacred laughter, and spiritual understanding. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Misra, R. S. (1998) The
integral advaitism of Sri Aurobindo. Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass.
(Original work published 1957)
Nachmanovitch, S. (1990). Free play: Improvisation in life and art.
New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam.
Nelson, L. E. (1998). Purifying the earthly body of God: Religion
and ecology in Hindu India. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Sax, W. S. (1995). The gods at play: Lila in South Asia.
London: Oxford University Press.
Taimni, I. K. (1975). The science of Yoga.
Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House.
Watts, A. (1969). The
book: On the taboo against knowing who you are. New York: Collier.
Watts, A. (1997). Zen
and the beat way. Boston: Tuttle Publishing.
Zaehner, R. C. (1962). Hinduism. London: Oxford University
Press.
Zimmer, H., & Campbell, J.
(1969). Philosophies of India.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.