Lila | June 28, 2004

Lila is Sanskrit and means “play” or “sport”. It refers to the idea in Hinduism, stressed by Vaishnavas, that the creating and controlling of the world by God is like the spontaneous and uncalculating self-expression of a sportsman or an artist. Lila is not used to suggest that God’s acts are frivolous, but that they are without self-interest and spontaneous. The lila doctrine continues and extends the ideal of selfless action taught earlier by the Bhagavadgita. The lila cosmology provides a theological ground, not fully exploited by Hindus, for delighting in the world as itself a product of God’s delight. A more common contribution of the idea has been assisting believers in accepting loss; all natural processes, dissolution as much as creation, are to be seen as the lila of the Lord, mysterious in nature but not devoid of intelligence and love. The lila thought is also found in Mahayana Buddhism, where Buddha is presented as a transcendent being playing or performing his life in order to guide and help human beings on their path to Nirvana. This idea is especially strong in the Lalitavistara (The Unfolding of the Play), an early Buddhist text.