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By Root 328 0

at survival, which fulfill themselves in being done in the present and do not necessarily imply some future reward. But indirectly and unintentionally, such behavior is useful for survival because it gives a point to surviving—not, however, when pursued for that reason. To play so as to be relaxed and refreshed for work is not to play, and no work is well and finely done unless it, too, is a form of play.

To be released from the "You must survive" double-bind is to see that life is at root playing. The difficulty in understanding this is that the idea of "play" has two distinct meanings which are often confused. On the one hand, to do something only or merely in play, is to be trivial and insincere, and here we should use the word "toying" instead of

"playing." But if some woman should say to me, "I love you," would it be right to answer, "Are you serious, or are you just playing with me?"

After all, if this relationship is to flourish, I very much hope that she is not serious and that she will play with me. No, the better question would be, "Are you sincere, or are you just toying with me?" Sincerity is better than seriousness, for who wants to be loved gravely? Thus, on the other hand, there is a form of playing which is not trivial at all, as when Segovia plays the guitar or Sir Laurence Olivier plays the part of Hamlet, or, obviously, when someone plays the organ in church. In this sense of the word Saint Gregory Nazianzen could say of the Logos, the creative wisdom of God:

For the Logos on high plays,

stirring the whole cosmos back and forth, as he wills, into shapes of every kind.

And, at the other end of the earth, the Japanese Zen master Hakuin: In singing and dancing is the voice of the Law.

So, too, in the Vedanta the whole world is seen as the lila and the maya of the Self, the first word meaning "play" and the second having the complex sense of illusion (from the Latin ludere, to play), magic, creative power, art, and measuring—as when one dances or draws a design to a certain measure. From this point of view the universe in general and playing in particular are, in a special sense, "meaningless": that is, they do not—like words and symbols—signify or point to something beyond themselves, just as a Mozart sonata conveys no moral or social message and does not try to suggest the natural sounds of wind, thunder, or birdsong. When I make the sound "water," you know what I mean. But what does this whole situation mean—I making the sound and your understanding it? What is the meaning of a pelican, a sunflower, a seaurchin, a mottled stone, or a galaxy? Or of a + b = b +

a? They are all patterns, dancing patterns of light and sound, water and fire, rhythm and vibration, electricity and spacetime, going like Thrummular, thrummular thrilp,

Hum lipsible, lipsible lilp;

Dim thricken mithrummy,

Lumgumptulous hummy,

Stormgurgle umbumdular bilp.

Or, in the famous words of Sir Arthur Eddington about the nature of electrons:

We see the atoms with their girdles of circulating electrons darting hither and thither, colliding and rebounding. Free electrons torn from the girdles hurry away a hundred times faster, curving sharply round the atoms with side-slips and hairbreadth escapes.... The spectacle is so fascinating that we have perhaps forgotten that there was a time when we wanted to be told what an electron is. The question was never answered.... Something unknown is doing we don't know what—that is what our theory amounts to. It does not sound a particularly illuminating theory. I have read something like it elsewhere:

The slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.

There is the same suggestion of activity. There is the same indefiniteness as to the nature of the activity and of what it is that is acting.(2)

The point is that "the spectacle is so fascinating." For the world is a spell (in Latin, fascinum), an enchantment (being thrilled by a chant), an amazement (being lost in a maze), an arabesque of such stunning rhythm and a plot so intriguing that we are drawn by its web into a state of involvement