Lila and Mudita
Stories of joy and celebration
Teacher Experience
A contemplative invitation for educators to reflect on before teaching.How might you create conditions for your students to express spontaneous joy and playfulness? Are there ways you might let the students be the leaders of a structured playtime experiment? What kinds of situations, games, or periods of lightly structured freedom would they universally enjoy? Take notes over time on what seems to make each student smile, and see how you might create the causes of joy for each of them to arise more often during your time together.
Student Experience
A contemplative invitation for students to connect with this learning goal.Think of a story you know where someone was really happy and playful, or where people celebrated something good together. Remember how the story made you feel and what made those characters special. Notice how stories change each time you tell them, and how that can make them even more fun and interesting.
Understanding
Students will understand...Exploring stories and examples of joyful play and celebrating others helps us understand how to bring more happiness into our own lives and the lives of people around us. When we learn from stories about lila and mudita, we can practice these same qualities in our daily activities.
Action
Students are able to...Explore stories and examples of joyful play and sympathetic celebration from various cultures; create and share stories that demonstrate the difference between spontaneity and impulsivity; and identify examples of mudita in literature and personal experience.
Content Knowledge
Students will know...Play is an important part of growing up and learning. Lila is a special word that means divine play – the idea that we can approach life with joy and fun. Mudita means feeling happy when good things happen to other people, like when your friend does well on a test or wins a game. When we play without worrying about being perfect, we can discover new things and have more fun.
Stories from different cultures show us examples of people who lived with joy and celebrated others’ happiness. Some stories teach us about characters who learned to play freely and help others feel happy too. When we share stories about times we felt truly joyful or helped others celebrate, we learn that happiness grows when we share it with others. Stories show us that things change, and that can be part of the joy – each time we tell a story, it might be a little different, and that makes it special.
Guiding Questions
Implementation Possibilities
Read and discuss stories featuring characters who embody joyful play and celebration of others’ success from diverse cultural traditions. Create classroom story collections where students share personal experiences of spontaneous joy and times they celebrated others’ achievements. Act out stories that demonstrate the difference between helpful spontaneity and impulsive behavior that might cause problems. Design storytelling activities where students create tales of characters learning to play freely and support others’ happiness. Practice sharing stories in circle time about moments when they felt genuine joy or helped others celebrate good news. Facilitate creative story-making projects where students illustrate or dramatize examples of mudita from their own lives and observations.
Assessment Ideas
Assess students’ ability to identify and explain examples of joyful play and celebration in stories and literature. Evaluate story-creation projects for evidence of understanding the difference between spontaneity and impulsivity. Use circle-time sharing to observe students’ recognition of mudita in personal experiences and others’ stories. Document students’ ability to create stories that demonstrate genuine celebration and joyful play through writing, drawing, or dramatic expression. Assess comprehension through students’ ability to connect story examples to their own experiences of joy and celebration.
