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Lilas come in different forms depending upon the god or goddess with which they are associated. In other words, the lila of each god is different, depending on the nature of that god. In this section I will first say a few words about the lilas of Brahma and Vishnu, the creator and preserver gods of the Hindu pantheon and also one of the most popular, well known and well loved lilas, the lila of Krishna. As previously mentioned, Shiva will be singled out for special treatment, in a separate section.
It all, I mean all begins with Brahman, who is the creator god. Brahma is IT—the only game in town. The cosmic creative principle is the only being who has true existence and so everything and everyone else is just an illusion. In essence, life is but a dream (as the circular song “row row row your boat” so aptly reminds us), the dream of Brahma, who dreams the universe into being. When Brahma wakes up, the universe disappears. Brahma is most often unmanifest and so this is about all we will say about him, since we do not want to disturb his sleep, because it is all over if we do. (Yet, if I do say more and wake him up, I will be finished and will not have to finish this . . . hmmm.) Thus, from within this dream the different lila’s begin. Other versions of this creation myth have Vishnu asleep on the milky ocean and the universe arises as a dream out of his navel (Campbell, 1995). We have already seen the lila of the Goddess and her maya.
Vishnu awake is much more interesting than he is asleep: sometimes playful, but tricky, too. He is Mayavin, a Trickster. Vishnu changes his surface appearance often, but underneath it all, he remains stable—which is a good trait for a preserver god. Compared to Shiva, as we will see, when Vishnu plays, he does not get as involved with the process. He is able to stay out of the game in a sense and manipulates through his maya. Vishnu's trickiness serves him when needed, as opposed to Shiva who ends up getting tricked. When Vishnu plays, there are no real rules in his game; he is able to manipulate the rules completely, such as when he plays dice with Lakshmi. When Vishnu wins through cheating, Lakshmi gets mad and takes away her maya—all the riches, beauty, and splendor in Vishnu’s world—but for Vishnu, all is not lost. He merely creates a double of her out of himself, so that she is forced to acknowledge his superiority and in this way Vishnu can be seen to have won (Handelman & Shulman, 1997).
Sri Ramakrishna tells a story about Vishnu’s maya (Eliade, 1991a): Narada asks Vishnu to see the magical power of his maya, and Vishnu consents and they begin to walk down a dry hot desert road. Vishnu gets thirsty and asks Narada to get him a glass of water at a nearby village. So Narada goes to the village and a beautiful girl opens the door, and forgetting all about the glass of water, Narada falls for her, marries her and has three children and after twelve years inherits her father’s farm. Then a torrential rain comes and he loses everything, the house, the animals, even his wife and children. Bereft and stranded on a rock Narada bursts into tears when he hears Vishnu’s voice asking where Narada has been, and remarking that Vishnu has been waiting for a half an hour. Narada then looks around and sees the prior scene of the hot desert landscape, as Vishnu asks: “Now, do you understand the secret of my maya?” Narada has experienced maya, but does not understand entirely, but he does know one essential thing, Eliade notes: “Vishnu’s cosmic maya is manifested through time” (pp. 70-71).
Krsna, better known as Krishna, is a manifestation of the god Vishnu, the preserver, and the stories of his lilas center around his childhood where Krishna was a disobedient child, spreading light-hearted havoc by playing tricks on his elders and disobeying his parents. As a young child, Krishna was a butter thief and once after he had eaten some dirt, his mother opened his mouth to get the dirt out and she saw the entire universe inside him. Needless to say, this is not what she was expecting, and it was disconcerting to say the least. Krishna realized that he needed to conceal his true identity from his mother and so he made her forget. Another aspect of Krishna's lila is his youthful adventures with the gopis, or cowherdesses, his female followers. He would flirt and dance with the gopis in the woods with all of them by becoming many. This lila reflects the idea of the surrender of the devotee to god, because the gopis out of passion for God strayed from their husbands and homes. The devotees of Krishna to this day express this playful energy in their festivals and raslilas, plays which depict these stories (Hein, 1987).
Hein speculates that perhaps Krishna's lila became popular to correct the restrictiveness of the caste system and other repressing aspects of culture at the time because in earlier times, the earnest Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita was more admired. The focus on the younger antics of Krishna in the Harivasma Purana around 300 C.E. were appealing for this reason, they sought in the Divine what they lacked in their lives and what they cherished most: the playful spirit of Krishna to help them endure these strictures.
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