For my unessay, I have made a board game inspired by our class discussions. The overview of the game focuses on liberation from saṃsāra in the form of nirvāṇa. This is done by collecting Enlightenment tokens, which can be earned by answering Buddha cards and by returning to the starting point of the board, representing the completion of one life cycle. I came up with this idea inspired by Monopoly, as it has no destination, but it is rather a continuous journey until a certain criteria is met, which reminded me of the cycle of rebirth, which continues until enlightenment is reached.

For the Buddha cards, all of the questions are based on our class discussions throughout the semester. I was creating flash cards to test my own understanding of our seminars when I thought about how I could turn the questions and answers into a game. The questions from the Buddha cards test a player’s understanding of Buddhist views on the topics of change, compassion, atoms, gender, karma, anger, love, violence, the environment and capitalism. Based on a player’s answer, they are awarded enlightenment tokens, as they have shown to understand Buddhist views and are closer to achieving enlightenment. There are also red Buddha cards, where if the players answer wrongly, they lose enlightenment tokens, as to signify straying away from Buddhist teachings.

Next are Karma cards, which I made to represent how our karma can be affected by our actions. They give the player an everyday scenario and the player’s reaction will depend on the roll of a die. This idea is specially rooted in our discussion of how karma is often misunderstood as a moral retribution of one’s actions, when it is actually more nuanced than that. I appreciated how the correct understanding of karma says how we should not resort to blaming an individual for their current circumstances. I made it luck based since our karma can be influenced by external factors, as symbolized in the story about the Buddha getting dysentery. Additionally, the reactions in the Karma cards highlight why there is a correct or incorrect response to the situation and what Buddhist topic it relates to.

The game ends when a player collects 8 enlightenment tokens, inspired from how following the 8 fold path results in the liberation from saṃsāra.

The objective of this game is to reflect on the teachings of the class and our class discussions. I went over the class notes for inspiration for the Buddha and Karma cards and picked my favorite parts of each week’s topics. Making this game also deepened my understanding of the topics we covered, as I had to make sure I understood the question I was asking in order to give an example answer. Thinking of the Karma cards was also fun since I tried to incorporate everyday situations and try to think “What would the Buddha do?” as opposed to what a regular person would do, and how each of these actions affect the overall path of enlightenment.

Overall, I had a fun time making this unessay and I hope to one day play it with my fellow classmates.