Cosmic Game All About Play Lila

It's All About Play: Lila 101

Muktananda (1971) describes the universe as a Play of Consciousness. The playful nature of the Divine is ancient and pervasive, going back as far as the RgVeda and the Upanishads (Coomaraswamy, 1941), although the word lila itself was first used in the Vedanta Sutras of Badarayana 2.1.33: “the supreme Lord creates the world merely in play (lilakaivalayam)” (Sax, 1995, p. 4). The word lila means play, and is most often associated with the play of the Divine, who creates freely, merely for the joy of it, out of spontaneous creativity, not by any need, lack or desire.

Sax (1995) notes that lila is an important concept and remains part of ordinary Hindu life. When he asked Indian people what lila meant, they would often tell him that “God created the world in the spirit of Lila, like a child who builds sandcastles and then unattached to his or her creation knocks it down and builds it again” (p. 3). In Gitanjali, Tagore uses this same image adding "in truth, in self-willed joy, there is something in common between the lila of childhood and the works of God” (Sax, p. 3). The notion of lila is also used to explain human suffering. Mysterious and tragic events are viewed as part of the mysterious play of the gods. Lila reflects the spontaneous nature of the Divine, being not entirely predictable. Sax notes that while this concept could lead to resignation, when it is embraced, it is often regarded as emancipatory.

Although most modern Hindu spokesmen are not enamored of the concept of lila, Sri Aurobindo has embraced lila’s world-affirming cosmological implications: “to support appreciation of the world in a spirit of religious wonder and to sustain a joy in living” (Hein, 1987, p. 551). Aurobindo (2000), in The Life Divine, teaches that the Divine is “a free artist” who creates real worlds and beings, and plays with and in souls in order to “lead them to ever higher levels of consciousness” (p. 553).

Word Play

A favorite “move” in depth psychology is to dive deeply into words. Lockhart (1983) in Words as Eggs talks about this in depth! Essentially, words themselves open up worlds and we can learn things we never dreamt of, see hidden meanings, and get new insights into our subjects when we go back and discover the roots of words and associated meanings. Another way that I like to play with words is through the thesaurus tool in Microsoft Word. By looking up a particular word, you can get other related words that might help you to see things in a new light. This is more of a horizontal move than the etymological move, and yields fascinating discoveries, making new links and connections. So with that in mind lets engage in a bit of word play with the word lila.

The Roots of Lila

Coomaraswamy (1941) in his article on Lila, after noting and discussing the pervasiveness of play, points out that the actual Sanskrit word lila is of post-Vedic origin. He traces lila’s roots, which he contends “must be related with lelay, ‘to flare’ or ‘flicker or ‘flame’ ” (p. 99) concluding:

We have been able to trace, accordingly, not only the continuity and universality of the notion of the divine activity thought of as a kind of game and dalliance, but also to recognize in the “play” of a flickering flame or vibrant light the adequate symbol of this epiphany of Spirit. (p. 101)

In Homo Ludens, Huizinga (1944/1955), also discusses the etymology of lila in his chapter on the play concept expressed in language. He notes that rapid movement is at the heart of all Sanskrit words involving play, and that the idea of lila also connotes “all of the light effortless, and insignificant sides of playing… lila is used in a sense of ‘as if’ to denote ‘seeming,’ ‘imitation,’ the ‘appearance’ of things, as in the English word ‘like,’ ‘likeness’” (p. 32).

Divine Playfulness

Etymologically, play is innate to the divine because the word “divine” comes from the Indo-European root dyeu meaning "to shine" (AHD, 2000b, online). The Sanskrit words deva and devi meaning "god" and "goddess" reflect this, too, and one of the meanings of the word div is sport (Baümer, 1995). Other interesting meanings are quicksilver, the supreme spirit, a fool, a child, and a lover (Apte, 2000, online). Out of this root, come familiar words associated with different divinities: deus, Zeus, Dione, Diana, Iovis, Jupiter, Jove, and Tiu—the Nordic sky god (Tuesday) (AHD 2000a, online). Cousineau (2004b) talks about the origin of the word sport as being desporto, "carried away, transported."

With this divine playfulness in mind, we will first look at the lila of the goddess and then the explore concept of maya (illusion) with which she is most often associated, before later considering the lila of the gods.

The Lila of the Goddess

McLean (1995) explains that the lila of the Goddess has been described like the game: playful but unpredictable, and yet the consequences of Her game can have momentous significance. McLean notes three major features of the Goddess’s lila: 1) she deludes the inhabitants of all three worlds, 2) it is a kind of game on Her part and 3) She appears to be quite mad, because the unpredictability of Her maya, which can take on a frightening nature. She seems to toy with Her creation, and we are held by Her maya. Ramprasad, a devotee of the Goddess, composed a song about Her where the game is kite-flying:

Mother Syama flies kites
(in the marketplace of the world).
They are mind-kites, floating in the winds of hope, held by the strings of maya.
The frames are made from bones and sinews, covered in exquisite workmanship with her own attributes,
Their strings are coated with the glue of worldliness so their cutting edge is keen.
Of a hundred thousand of them only one or two break free, and you Mother laugh and clap your hands.
Prasad says, “they fly away on the southerly wind.
Over the sea of the world to freedom on the other side. (McLean, 1995, p. 89)

This poem is about the salvation of individuals, and most do not make it and are not saved because they are helplessly held or deluded by Her maya, and She claps and laughs about this—oh great! Ramakrishna, commenting on this poem notes “She is full of play. This world is Her lila. She is willful, full of joy” (McLean, p. 89). She completely deludes most people and is a magician, a trickster, and hides behind a show of magic and pretence, sometimes adopting the form of other deities. Like the other gods, She is ambiguous by nature and is on par with Vishnu or Shiva and may even be more powerful.

Keep this poem and the Goddess in the back of your mind when we explore Mary Poppins (Stevenson, 1964) in the Kaleidoscope of Culture.

End of section, continue to the Magic of Maya