“Even now I am in front of a Go board” thinks the 1000 year old ghost Sai from Hikaru no Go. “But for how long will God continue to listen to my selfishness?” The answer to that is a major spoiler for the story, but here’s a hint: Perhaps humans, like the stones on the Go board, are placed where they are for a purpose beyond themselves.

The ancient board game of Go may have some things in common with the great world religions. Is it a coincidence?

I hope that the recent revival of the ancient board game of Go (or igo, in Japanese) will also lead to a flowering of religion, specifically good religion. I generally think highly of religion, as promoting virtue and wisdom. But there is also bad religion, this cannot be denied: It promotes anger, pride and discord. I like to think that the game of Go, despite being a war game in principle, has qualities that encourage virtue and wisdom, and aligns with higher religion. I may be wrong about this, so let us think about it together.

It is clear from observation that Go encourages patience and self-control. We tend to think of young people as being volatile, given to quick bursts in one direction or the other, flittering and fluttering like butterflies from one idea to the next. But young people who play Go are able to sustain concentration for steadily longer periods of time, and suppress rash moves in order to reach a goal that is ahead in time. This is wise and virtuous, and any activity that promotes it should be given due credit.

An interesting difference between Go and chess is that chess is feudal: The pawns are inherently less worth than knights and bishops, from the very start. In contrast, all stones in Go are equal at the start, and equal at the end when they go back in the same box. It is only through their position on the board and the influence of being at the right time and place, that they derive their value. This is a way of looking at humans that is also aligned with virtue and wisdom. We are all born as babies, and it is through being at the right place at the right time doing the right thing that we become valuable in the greater picture. Someone who may seem insignificant at the moment may become very important at a future time.

To take one example, the religion of Christianity started in a barn and continued with a dead man on a stake, basically. It could hardly be less auspicious, a sight that would make most stomachs churn. But within a few decades, it was bringing light and hope to many nations. As for the Buddha, he was born a king but became a pawn, wandering off into the forest to leave all earthly ambitions behind. Yet his wisdom has lifted nations up over the ages to come. Lao-Tzu is said to have been riding out of the empire on a yak when he wrote the book of the Tao. He seemed destined to be forgotten, but a border guard convinced him to write briefly the wisdom of his long life. Even though what we do may seem insignificant, if it is part of a higher plan, it may turn things around long after our passing.There is no telling which small and forgettable person may end up being a hub on which fate turns. Nor can we tell at a glance who is winning and who is losing. The play of a greater hand may change one into the other.

A perhaps more double-edged effect of Go: Everything on the board must be assumed to be meaningful, to have a purpose, if only you could see it. Unless you are playing against a small child or a madman, there is not a stone on the board that isn’t there for a purpose.

The world we see around us can be said to consist of “law and coincidence”, or order and randomness. There are clearly laws of nature that keep the great things on path: The sun rises and sets, the moon waxes and wanes reliably. But there are also things that seem utterly unpredictable. This mixing of order and randomness goes very deep: If we have a sample of radioactive Actinium-225, we know that it will be reduced to half by exactly 10 days. But if we observe the individual atoms, there is no possibility to predict when they will decay. We know that half of them will be gone, but any one of them might linger for months, or disappear within seconds. There is no way they can agree among themselves who will change: They are atoms, they cannot communicate and have neither wit nor will.

On the goban (Go board), there is no randomness. Yet if you come by two strangers playing, at first glance it may look random indeed. (Although I am told that this is less so to an expert.) So the practice of playing Go encourages the thinking that all things have a meaning, a purpose. Religion is known to confer a similar experience. But is this really true?

There is such a thing as superstition. For instance, a black cat crosses the road and later that day you become virulently ill. There is a saying that bad fortune follows when a black cat crosses the road, so you may think this is the reason, or if not the reason then at least a portent or warning of something that would happen anyway. But neither science nor high religion supports this form of thinking. A lot of things happen that have no meaning in themselves.

But like the stones on the Go board, these things may have a meaning from outside themselves, because they are placed there by a higher hand. This is what religion teaches. But this requires belief in a God or Karma or some such higher power that controls all that seems to be random. That is quite a leap of faith! This aspect of religion is, and should be, voluntary. I am not going to try to convince you. As Jesus Christ once said: “If they don’t believe Moses and the prophets, they will not believe if someone rises from the dead.” Indeed, one of the last things any of his disciples said to him before his suffering in Gethsemane and on Calvary was: “Show us the Father, and it will be enough for us.” But of course Jesus could not show them the eternal, omnipresent God. He could only show himself. In the end, that was enough for 11 of the 12 who were with him. But not for all. No matter what we say or do, it will never be enough for all. This is how the universe was intended to work, allowing free will. This is what I believe.

So what I say is that the habits from playing Go may make it easier to think in the same way as higher religions do. Whether you think that is a good thing or not, I have no control over that. Nor do I see it as favoring one religion over another, really, although I suppose someone else may see that. And if you can derive wisdom and virtue from it without religion – which I am sure is possible as well – this is in itself a good thing, surely. These are scarce resources at any time.

But at least I can see more clearly now why so many elderly Japanese spend their final years playing Go. Perhaps it would be even better if they had started early, as many young people have done since the 1990es. Let us see what will be the final outcome of that.