The Harried Mystic

Generally speaking, I am not much of a sports fan, but I do like to watch the Pennant and World Series games. As I watched tonight at different points, I felt the tension at tight moments and the suspense of it all that I’ve enjoyed in the past. At the bottom of the 8th inning I asked myself: ” Would the Yankees actually pull it out and win in the 9th inning tonight ?”

Well, it was not meant to be tonight. Now, with this game behind us, and the Series going to game six in NY, I find myself reflecting on the variables involved in who wins and who loses a game. The skills involved in hitting, pitching, fielding, mindfulness of all the moving parts, strategy applied to the strengths and weaknesses of players on the other team, the weather, the health of the players, etc., are all factors that combine in complex stochastic ways to decide the outcomes. As in all of life, we try to bring the best we have to offer into every moment.  Sometimes we do, and sometimes we don’t, but outcomes are co-determined by many inter-dependent factors. The allure and emotional engagement of a game (of any sport) is that it plays out, in a bite-sized microcosm, the mix of intention, skill, and uncertainty that is all of life. It reflects, in miniature, the exquisite entanglement of factors in many dimensions that shape the reality of every moment.

Sport is an allegory,  a mystery, and a morality play. It presents the characters on a stylized stage who we watch as each player makes choices in the midst of largely indeterminate circumstances . This is scenario thinking at its finest. We become very concentrated and all our senses are at maximum as we watch everything unfold. We can feel the players’ intensity: their joy and frustration. In exciting moments, we cannot pull ourselves from the action and can think of nothing else. We are on pins and needles waiting to see what the next few seconds will bring. I close my day  thinking of the spiritual value sport can have. Whether we enjoy bowling, tennis, golf, sailing, flying or other forms of strategy gaming, at heart, they all have two things in common: (1) high orders of concentrated energy, and  (2) the marriage of intuition and skill  in responding to diverse and  unpredictable circumstances.

Where is the spirituality in all this?

Spiritual practice arises from anything we do with intent to experience the integral character of all things; interbeing, as Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh refers to it. If we play a game with the same intent and mindset, to simply be wholly present, alive in the moment, and keenly attuned to what’s real, then we are meditating. One may benefit from a conscious intent to either take part in or watch the game as sitting practice and meditation in action . All of this reminds me of the wonderful small book,  the Practice of the Presence, by Brother Lawrence, and the encouragement of spiritual adepts from many traditions to meditate and pray without ceasing.

© Brother Anton and The Harried Mystic, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.