Showing posts with label chess. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chess. Show all posts
Thoughts 64
64: Attack may well be the best form of defense elsewhere, but in chess, a good defense causes the opponent to attack himself!
Correspondence chess!
Move the pawn every dawn
Walk the rook on every nook
Slide the bishop every stop
Hop the knight every night
Keep the queen on the scene
While the King is in the ring
Play a game of correspondence chess
And avoid the worldly mess!
Walk the rook on every nook
Slide the bishop every stop
Hop the knight every night
Keep the queen on the scene
While the King is in the ring
Play a game of correspondence chess
And avoid the worldly mess!
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
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
Stalemate
Yes, this refers to chess. I was a chess freak a lot many years back and retain the insanity a little, still. I'm not saying that I am good at it, but I love to play the game. Most often people watching my game get frustrated due to the slow pace of it. I hate the game of blitz not because I always lose, but it is an insult to chess when it is played rapidly. It can be likened to harsh, unthought, biased, angered decisions! Chess is a classic game that needs to be respected for its unimaginable possibilites in each and every step. The only way the purity and sanctity (literally) of the game can be maintained is by playing it slow, unless you really think fast, treating it as the very essence of your life. Think of each step as an important decision of your life, knowing quite well how a wrong move can change the entire scenario!
I don't follow any standard opening schemes or anything like that, nor do I know any standard defences, but I do get inspired by opponents moves at times and try to carry these into my game too, with less success though! Enough talk about me, back to the game...
Stalemate, as every chess player knows, is a situation where the game can't move further, because (the current player doesn't have her King under check and) any of the player's available moves would put the King under check. This results in a kind of a draw thats mostly frustrating for the opponent if she's leading! This topic stuck me from a puzzle: Knight's tour. The situation that one gets in while solving the said puzzle is similar to the title. I found it very difficult to finish it off once, that too with a pattern-help from someone else. (As a trivia, this colleague's resume was filtered by me and he got a slight advantage over others since he'd put *chess* under hobbies on his resume :)
I don't follow any standard opening schemes or anything like that, nor do I know any standard defences, but I do get inspired by opponents moves at times and try to carry these into my game too, with less success though! Enough talk about me, back to the game...
Stalemate, as every chess player knows, is a situation where the game can't move further, because (the current player doesn't have her King under check and) any of the player's available moves would put the King under check. This results in a kind of a draw thats mostly frustrating for the opponent if she's leading! This topic stuck me from a puzzle: Knight's tour. The situation that one gets in while solving the said puzzle is similar to the title. I found it very difficult to finish it off once, that too with a pattern-help from someone else. (As a trivia, this colleague's resume was filtered by me and he got a slight advantage over others since he'd put *chess* under hobbies on his resume :)
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