The game of life is a chess match against varying forces: the ultra-processed food that nags at us as we trudge by in the supermarket (shoutout to delicious cracker sandwiches with cheese filling!); the imperfections of others (which we believe we could easily fix, if only it were us in their poor shoes); the inner monologue that pines when you do anything resembling a shadow of hard work (the uninvited house guest, the ego).

To say life is a chess match is hardly revolutionary; chess has deftly infiltrated English. If you’re a go-getter boss, you’re a “kingpin”; if you’re naive, a “pawn.” We tell others that they’ve reached a “stalemate”; we tell ourselves that we’re “back to square one.” Some want to keep others “in check”–others say it’s “above their pay grade.” There’s hardly a game more influential in our language’s history.

Every person on Earth is playing a chess match, but each life is a different version and the difficulty is as widely varied. Some are stuck playing hard mode; others skate by with nary a bead of sweat. Part of this is circumstantial–it can be hard to feel like anything’s easy when you’re incapacitated by a terrible disease or have no consistent shelter–but part of it is the pluckiness of the main character. Are you going to forge into the checkered abyss in an attempt to corner the queen? Will you hang back and let enemy forces waltz into the traps you’ve lain?

You know the game. But have you ever played chess on the underside of the chess board? This is a game where everything is reversed. To the untrained player, there are no rules. Winning comes from existing on the board–but there are no winners at all. This “undergame” doesn’t have a cut-and-dry enemy; your “enemy” is ambiguity itself. Many people who are excellent at chess fail when the board is flipped. If there are no squares to move into, how is one supposed to advance?

When you first come in contact with a board with no squares, there isn’t much to do. You look at the board and wonder how in the world anyone can do anything but be bored out of their mind. But slowly, the no-rules rules start to appear.

In the undergame, the first rule takes shape at the speed with which you can let go of the conventional rules of chess, or what I call the “overgame”. When you do finally let go, rule one appears: to simply exist on the board. Stillness settles.

As you begin to play with rule one, rule two slowly comes into view: the more you follow the first rule, the more interesting this new type of chessboard becomes. Without squares, you’re free. You have the space to see the board without squares, to release yourself from the idea of winning at all. Stillness deepens.

After you stumble upon those first two rules, a third rule arises: the more you follow the second rule, the more the first rule becomes true. As you become present and the world becomes more interesting simply by observing the stillness, simply existing becomes an ever more important rule. Stillness stays.

Once you grasp those three rules, you become much more fluent in the undergame. With those three rules as your guide, you can now exist on the board more peacefully because the rules ask not to make rules. When the goal becomes to exist on the underside of the board, there are no adversaries, no wounded, no dire positions.

The undergame is what recontexualizes your regular chess matches. Suddenly, the siren’s call of cheese sandwich crackers becomes less alluring because you’re playing by new rules. You enjoy the crackers on occasion, but those occasions are special because of how rare they are– stillness is the real treat. The imperfections in others glow; letting go of the idea that you are supposed to shoehorn the world into something of your ego’s design, you instead watch the fireworks from a gentle distance. Sitting on a grassy knoll, you smile. Your inner monologue is equally precious–it’s the guide that reminds you that to escape the voice, you must follow the first rule in the undergame. Your inner monologue reminds you that the entire theatrical production is unfolding every moment in front of you. It’s free, and you can watch it at any time.

The undergame may be more important than the game of conventional chess. Learning the undergame teaches you how to play the game of chess with more ease, but applying the conventional rules of chess to the undergame will result in a loss without knowing you are losing. While there are no winners in the undergame, there are more competent players and less competent players. Those who attempt to play the undergame like the overgame wind up frustrated and only wishing that they could change the board to one with squares. They might even try to–but this is a moot quest, because the rules don’t apply, no matter how hard you try to jam them into existence.

After you realize there is an undergame, you can observe the overgame being played around you in great detail. You can even get caught up in who’s winning and losing, but in the end, the undergame becomes the rules with which you play chess. It can be thrilling and heart-wrenching to watch those who don’t know there’s an undergame attempt to win the overgame. But without the undergame to undergird your understanding, they’re underprepared.

You can never learn enough about the undergame, but unlike the overgame, you don’t have to study anything except what is right in front of you. The entire nebulosity of the undergame asks you only to keep studying–the first rule. You can spend a lifetime learning about the first rule of the undergame–and many have. But if you only play the overgame, you’ll never learn the undergame well enough to excel when the board flips back to checkers and chess.

The undergame releases you from the rules and benchmarks you’ve set for yourself that don’t serve you. If you can’t win, you can’t lose. You can blindly play the undergame, or you can study ambiguity so deeply that it becomes your friend. In this ambiguity, there is peace.

Meditation teaches us that advancing isn’t a matter of making progress on the board; advancing is simply existing on the board, using each moment as a square in itself. If you can stay on the board and remember that there are no rules, you can win in each moment. Paradoxically, there is as much skill involved in playing a chess match in the undergame as in the overgame. The rules of regular chess become a hindrance because you look to something to follow, when the entire world is your guide. Learning to let go of these rules of chess so that you can excel when the board is flipped, is a key skill in meditation.

If I could ask of you one thing, it would be to learn the undergame. You might not know there is another level to life, a world here and now, but beyond the chessboard of wins and losses we incur daily. If you can tap into the undergame, there’s no overgame that can touch you. You transcend the rules, no matter which side you’re playing on.

If you ever get confused on how to play the undergame, return to these three rules:

1. Simply exist.
2. The more you follow the first rule, the more interesting the world becomes.
3. The more you follow the second rule, the more true the first rule becomes.

Play well.