Lila, the Play of the Gods

let me tell you a little secret

Play is pointless. That’s the point!

We like to do it because we don’t have to. (That’s what makes it play, and not work.)

Play is time and space partitioned off, free from the usual concerns. It is a world unto itself, a microcosm we get to enter and be transported. As long as the cards are in play, the ball moving, the game clock ticking, everything else can wait. Has to wait. For the duration of the game, nothing else matters. Nothing else even exists. We get a reprieve—along with refreshment, release and recollection of why it’s worth it to be here (i.e. in a messy, malfunction-prone meat suit on a wobbly orb that’s starting to undergo a once-in-an-epoch molt).

So why, again? Because of joy, freedom, delight. Because of flow states. Because of play.

“All the world’s a stage / and all the men and women merely players…” quoth the Bard in As You Like It (a comedy, the most playful sort of play). This idea of existence itself as a form of play is an old one, prominent in the thought of Vedic India.

There the word is लीला līlā—“divine play,” “play of the gods.” One of the countless Hindu deities considered supreme by her devotees is Sri Lalita Tripura Sundari. Lalita means “one who plays.” Her game is none other than reality, the very universe itself, which winks into and out of existence with the blinking of her beautiful eyes. (Naturally she is a pleasant, a benevolent goddess, and a seductive one. But that doesn’t mean she’s quick to let us off the merry-go-round of samsara—what would be the fun in that?)

Using another of India’s rich cache of terms for the ultimate (“Brahman"), Ram Shankar Misra writes, “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.”

Ah, but why does it contain so much that is anything but blissful?

At the risk of waxing excessively philosophical, I would suggest that evil, darkness, the myriad faces of ugly—all this is essential to the stories that make up the fabric of reality. Without evil, darkness, pain, there would be good, no light. No perseverance. No triumph. No plot.

So we enter the great cosmic game, quickly forgetting its nature. Lifetimes go by, some with glimpses of the absolute, peeks behind the curtain that keeps us separate. They say that with grace, perhaps one life in a million comes to the full realization that I am that—the players, the game itself. The beautiful and the ugly. God playing hide and seek, lost in her own marvelous maze of creation, looking for herself.

For the rest of us, well, ordinary play gives us a taste. Reminds us, if only subliminally, of the nature of the game we are all playing as if our lives depended on it.

For my part, I try to remember to play, and play again: cards, board games, music, sports. The specific form of grown-up play that is sex. The spirit-infused play of divination. All of it is, well, sacred. A secret weapon against life’s drudgery and stupidity; a cheat code that clears us of stress and renews us—for delight and despair can’t coexist in a given moment.

Play puts us in mysterious harmony with the gods, for whom play is all there is.

Care for a game?