Prolegomena to the study of Youxi Sanmei 遊戲三昧 Buddhist sacred play between agonism and mimicry

ABSTRACT

This article outlines a genealogical profile of an elusive doctrinal concept that, after being discussed in several Mahāyāna sutras, had a significant impact on East Asian Buddhist traditions. This notion is known as ‘playful samādhi’, in Chinese youxi sanmei 遊戲三昧, which translates to Sanskrit vikrīḍita samādhi. The compound youxi 遊戲 (‘playful’ – ‘at play’) was cited in Chinese sutras and Buddhist documents, in renowned and widely diffused collections of gongans/kōans 公案, was expounded and commented on by Dōgen Zenji 道元禅師 (1200–1253) in its Japanese version yuge 遊戲 and was explored by modern scholars and interpreters as Ryōsuke Ōhashi 大橋良介 and Wu Rujun 吳汝均, who compares youxi 遊戲 with Schiller’s Spieltrieb . Given the significance of ‘playful samādhi’ across different epochs and cultures, I believe a clarification of the term is especially needed. Furthermore, explicit reference to contemporary scholarship on play studies can help uncover its philosophical implications, shedding new light on a complex notion that defies a univocal interpretation and reunites in its semantic field both the aesthetic and religious dimensions.

KEYWORDS:

• Playful samadhi
• Buddhism
• play
• self

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I use ‘C’. as an abbreviation for the Chinese language, ‘J’. for Japanese, ‘S’. for Sanskrit and ‘P’. for Pali.

2. And also a kind of metre. The original aesthetic dimension of the concept highlights the natural association that seems to exist between play and creativity. Many kinds of play take advantage of a creative mindset, and every creative exercise can be interpreted as a form of play.

3. The ‘four concentrations’, according to the Dharma-saṃgraha, are: śūraṅgamo, the ‘heroic march’, associated with the heroic valour; gagaṇa-gañjo, ‘celestial jewel’, associated with the void; vimala-prabhaḥ, ‘pure light’, associated with clarity of mind; and siṁha-vikrīḍitaś-ceti, the ‘lion’s play’.

4. The two character originally detain a slightly different meaning. You 游means floating, swimming, drifting along the water’s surface, while you遊means roaming, wandering, travelling, playing. The two also share several meanings.

5. In the Chinese text, the fact that children are ‘at play’ or ‘in play’ is indicated with the character xi 戲.

6. The ‘contaminations’ (P. āsava, S. āsrava, C. lou 漏) are mental defilements that are eradicated upon realizing Buddhahood. They are sometimes classified under various categories, for instance, the contaminant of sensuality, of continuing existence, of ignorance, of delusory views. The Chinese term—literally ‘to leak’ – corresponds to the prevalent Buddhist interpretation of āsava as ‘outflows’ that flow out from an individual, conditioning behaviour and psycho-physical balance.

7. In several texts, the homophonous variant you 游is prevalent over the more traditional 遊.

8. The traditional narrative, dismantled by modern scholarship, presents two rival schools. The ‘Northern School’ or ‘East Mountain School’ guided by Shenxiu 神秀 (607–706) and the ‘Southern School’ founded by Huineng 惠能 (638–713), who subsequently became the official heir of the Dharma seal and Sixth Patriarch of Chan. The Northern teaching was associated with gradual awakening (jian jiao 漸教), the Southern teaching with immediate (or non-mediated) awakening (dun jiao 頓教). To see more, please see J. McRae, Seeing through Zen: Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism, Berkeley, University of California Press 2003.

9. This is known as the doctrine of the ‘triple body’ (trikāya) of the Buddha. Partial entry from The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism: ‘The notion of different buddha bodies was also deployed to respond to the question of the nature of the Buddha jewel (buddharatna), one of the three jewels or three refuges of Buddhism. Since the physical body of the Buddha was subject to decay and death, was it a suitable object of refuge? In response to this question, it was concluded that the Buddha jewel was in fact a body or group (kāya) of qualities (dharma), such as the eighteen unique qualities of a Buddha’.

10. The concept of ‘nonduality’ (P. advaya; S. advaita; C. 不二 bu’er) represents one of the foundational cornerstones of Buddhist thought and formally coincides with the awareness gained through awakening, which transcends all conventional dichotomies in which compounded existence is structurally organized—right and wrong, true and false, life and death, conventional and ultimate, subject and non-subject, et cetera.

11. The term is translatable also as ‘supreme ruler’ or ‘god’. The ‘supremacy’ implied by the term is ultimately derivative from an ideal of self-ownership.

12. According to Li (2013), ziyou 自由is employed in particular to express an ideal of freedom in respect to a socio-institutional framework. For more on this, please see Dahua Li 大華李, Nature and Freedom: The Philosophy of Zhuangzi 自然與自由: 莊子哲學研究, Beijing 北京: Shangwu Yinshuguan 商務印書館, 2013.

13. Or, ‘acting accordingly to the functions, answering accordingly to the words’. McRae’s translation ‘He acts in response to the functions [the students], and he answers in response to their words’ (2008, 74).

14. It is important to note that the ‘magic circle’ does not represent a prominent notion in Huizinga’s original text. Rather, the current usage of the term was introduced and popularized by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman in the essay Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003.