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

This article outlines a genealogical profile of an elusive doctrinal concept that, after being discussed in several Mahayana sutras, had a significant impact on East Asian Buddhist traditions. This notion is known as 'playful samadhi', in Chinese youxi sanmei , which translates to Sanskrit vikridit. a samadhi. The compound youxi ('playful' - 'at play') was cited in Chinese sutras and Buddhist documents, in renowned and widely diffused collections of gongans/koans , was expounded and commented on by Dogen Zenji (1200-1253) in its Japanese version yuge and was explored by modern scholars and interpreters as Ryosuke Ohashi and Wu Rujun , who compares youxi with Schiller's Spieltrieb. Given the significance of 'playful samadhi' 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.