En passant

There's a rule in chess called the en passant. I like it as a good analogy for life's (spiritual) progress. The main goal being promotion (to Queen) for the pawn, still, it allows itself to wander around and cut across other squares to capture an opponent, even at the eleventh hour. Now, that poses an interesting problem for me to see. I seem to be doing something that I'm not supposed to do. Forget me, I'm kind of a backward pawn or a doubled/tripled pawn thats not even near the promotion from any angle. Consider a sanyaasi for example. He may *seem* to be wandering off (limits) as defined by the people, but he may not actually be doing so. To him, nothing matters. It only affects people who think that their rules bind the renunciate! They've no idea of what the sanyaasi lives. All that they all know is superficial life.

Coming back to the *pawn* analogy, the aim remains *promotion* even though it goes diagonally across to capture other pieces of the *opponent*. But it may well end up in a *file* that is blocked further by stronger opponents, in which case, things may be a lot worse than they were in its earlier file! So the pawn needs to be calculative on how to lead through files or just the current file too. This calculation is what makes *chess* interesting.

Mathematically, if we replace the asterisked words above with the following, we'll get to what I wanted to draw chess parallels with.

pawn = human
promotion = liberation
opponent = (an aspect of) maayaa
file = life or stages/paths of life
chess = bhavasaagara

To elaborate, although human's life is aimed at liberation, one may cross over into different aspects of maayaa and still reach across, while others think not so. However, one needs to be careful about stepping through various stages/paths so as to not get trapped in maayic pitfalls, forget the goal and end up in a not-so-likeable life!

Crossing over to en passant which we started with, in the last stage of a human pawn's life, that is sanyaasa, one may step across various maayaa aspects or so it may seem. The renunciate is so near the goal that he's an apt passed pawn. Moreover, be sure to know that the en passant rule is not for all pawns, its only for the pawn that's made it to the said square!

Lastly, a yoga-bhrashta would be an underpromotion for the pawn, who otherwise would have made a passed pawn, ideally; the rest who are involved in the worldly life are, perhaps, under stalemate!

"The pawns are the soul of chess." - Philidor