Not everything needs a reason—sometimes we do it “just for fun.” This playful dimension, however, may warrant serious attention. We are classified as Homo Sapiens, highlighting our capacity for discernment, wisdom, and rational thought. We’ve also been identified as Homo Economicus (”economic” man), Homo Faber (man “the maker”), Homo Religiosus (“religious” man), Homo Technologicus (“technological” man). Johan Huizinga, in his famous book, posits that underlying all these identities is Homo Ludens (”playing” man). He argues that play is older than culture, predating any particular stage of civilisation and fundamental to all living beings, always. Play is observable even among animals, who require no societal structure or defined culture to learn it. There is something profoundly visceral about this appetite—we love to play.
Huizinga asserts that “You can deny, if you like, nearly all abstractions: justice, beauty, truth, goodness, mind, God. You can deny seriousness, but not play.” A compelling observation: no child requires instruction in how to play, and this instinctive drive persists throughout life, albeit in increasingly complex, demanding, and circuitous forms. The Industrial Revolution, along with the growing complexity of modern survival, means strenuous labour is often a precondition for the privilege of play. We diligently operate in this world out of duty, responsibility, necessity and complexity. Because of unlimited desires, we’re like a spider who creates a web and then gets entangled within it. Thus, we keep ourselves busy in the hamster wheel of life, working hard, pushing to get something or reach somewhere. The net result—all work and no play.
We live serious lives. Modern society conditions us to be calculative, discerning, shrewd, responsible, and judicious. The vibrant, carefree spirit of youth is steadily dismantled, replaced by the structures and strictures of adulthood, distancing us from our innate playful nature. To spiritually grow up is to become a child again, where life is play and play is life. The individual soul is described in the Vedāntic expression ānandamayo ‘bhyāsāt: “composed entirely of bliss.” Spiritual play, in its deepest manifestation, is not incidental, supplemental or peripheral, but the very heartbeat of existence. The Sanskrit terms krīḍā and vihāra convey notions of leisure and recreation, but play attains its fullest realisation in the drama of līlā.
In the transcendent domain, all activity is līlā—divine, purposeless play that evokes rasa, the aesthetic experience of relish and delight. For the perfected soul who enters this līlā dimension, everything is perfect, just as it is. We are exactly where we are meant to be; activities have no extraneous goal. Everything is done “just for fun.” The soul possesses three intrinsic qualities: eternality, sentience, and bliss. When fairy tales conclude with the phrase “they lived happily ever after,” they unwittingly allude to these inherent attributes: cit (lived), ānanda (happily), and sat (ever after). The fulfilment of humanity’s deepest and most enduring aspiration—the prospect of eternal play—lies in the reorientation of the self toward this eternal, spiritual reality. As C.S. Lewis insightfully observed, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists… If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”