The Tibetan Game Of Liberation

The Tibetan game of liberation was first composed by the Tibetan Buddhist theologian Sakya Pandita Kunga Gyaltsen, ཆོས་རྗེ་ས་སྐྱ་པཎྜི་ཏ་ཀུན་དགའ་རྒྱལ་མཚན།(1182–1251), in the early 13th century. He hoped to help her illiteracy ailing mother to learn about the basic knowledge of the Buddhism easily by playing this game.

The Tibetan game of liberation is a metaphor for life and it has considered as a game of “ascending the [spiritual] levels” (sa gnon rnam bzhags)“/Determination of the Ascension of Stages”, this type of game uses the form of a simple die-governed race game to model the physical and metaphysical geography of Hindu and Buddhist cosmology, and the goal of the game is to walk the path and reach the Nirvana.

The game is originally from an ancient Indian game, called Moksha Patam(Snakes and Ladders /Chutes and Ladders). Moksha Patam is not only a board game, but also a powerful tools associated with traditional Hindu philosophy and it uses for educating the players about the effects of good deeds versus bad ones.

Sakya Pandita Kunga Gyaltsen created the first The Tibetan game of liberation with 104 squares, based on Buddhism theology, and his version of The Tibetan Game of Liberation were popular in the Himalayan region over the centuries. Until today, it remains popular in parts of the Himalayan region.

Our The Tibetan Game of Liberation App was inspired and basic on Chögyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche’s version “Game of Liberation” that he compose at 1995. And Rinpoche finalized the game to 108 different dimensions by 1998.

And we are very grateful that we be able to receive the guidings from Chögyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche during the time while we were making this “The Tibetan Game of Liberation App.