Sports and athletics can be a path in Zen, in concordance with daily practice of zazen meditation. You need to move with your spirit, not just with your body.
In Zen we strive to bring both the mind and the body into perfect combination, so that there is no intrinsic difference between them.
It is easier to develop the mind through meditation than it is just through athletic practice. If you put the two together, it will be unbelievable.
I recommend for everyone the study of some type of sports or athletics, particularly martial arts. Always check with your doctor first, naturally.
All success in sports and athletics, from the Zen point of view, comes from the mind. No matter what kind of shape your body is in, there is disharmony in the being.
There are lots of people who work out and aren’t at all powerful in terms of their mind or their spirits.
In the Zen of sports and athletics, we seek to bring discipline and control into our physical movements, but at the same time to eliminate the self that gets in the way of perfect play.
In the West, we think of sports and athletics as individual achievement, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat; it all revolves around the ego. This has nothing to do with the Zen of sports and athletics.
If someone else runs faster than you or makes more money than you or is more adept at anything, that doesn’t mean you have lost. You are measuring yourself only against yourself and your tendencies not to do all that you are capable of doing.
Before beginning an activity always first empty yourself of thoughts regarding what you are about to do.
Allow the inherent emptiness within what you are about to do direct you.
Instead of your ego directing you and making countless mistakes, allow yourself to be guided by the invisible principles of the universe within your action.
When you can become completely impassive in play, then you become fluid and completely unpredictable. No one knows, including yourself, what you will do next. You couldn’t even explain it.
If I have led my life totally deliberately, then when I come to the end of the diving board, I can just fall off the diving board and it will be perfect. I won’t even remember what happened.
You can hit a home run. If you are honest, you’ll know when it’s perfect because at that critical moment of connection, there was no sense of being there. That is perfect play. There is no self involved.
If all the members of a team have synchronized their energy and they have all subordinated their egos to success of the team, then we have a functioning unit. If we have a lot of hotshots who want attention, you won’t really play that well.
Teamwork – everything is one. You can connect with the emptiness of all things. All things are empty.
If you are serious about sports and athletics then you need to begin the discipline of mind. With the power of mind, almost anything can be accomplished.
The emptiness of play is when there is no self present. There is no one playing – there is only play itself taking place, perfect fluid motion.
If you have the sense of participation in sports or athletics, of being a player, then you are not really into the Zen mind. In Zen mind there is no sense of self in the play.