lila
लीला līlāDivine play; the doctrine that the Absolute creates and acts not out of need or for any purpose but in free, spontaneous, purposeless play. Stated in Brahma Sutra 2.1.33 (lokavat tu lila-kaivalyam), it answers why a complete reality, lacking nothing, would create at all: as the overflow of its own bliss, the way a king who wants for nothing still plays a game.
Explained in depth in Lila: The World as Divine PlayWhere this term appears
- The Chola Age and the Temple as Institution History
The Cholas were the dominant power of southern India for more than four centuries, from the rise of Vijayalaya around 848 CE to the fall of the last emperor in…
- Who is Rama? Deities
The devotional tradition reads this differently and beautifully: the Lord, having taken a human body, plays the part completely, and his apparent human limits are themselves his lila , his divine play.
- Rasa: emotion, beauty, and the arts as a spiritual science Philosophy
It is a machine for tasting him, a way of relishing the divine lila , the play of God, from the inside.
- The Book of the Lord Treatise
…into the autumn night for the circling dance of divine love, the rasa-lila .
- The Name Treatise
This is what makes the name Lalita the most important name the Sahasranama gives her - and the doctrine the name encodes, the doctrine of lila , is read with some variation across the Sri Vidya lineages.