Vol. 18. August 1, 2021
All summer long, Buddhist wisdom has been oozing off the courts, out the gyms and from the pools of our athletes.
It’s time to shine the Buddhist spotlight on these pearls of wisdom and incorporate them into our own championship endeavors.
The basic message gets inflected, but the wisdom says the same: Stay in the moment.
Caeleb Dressel, 24, the world’s fastest swimmer, arrived at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo with the pressure on him to win gold. Intense pressure can lead to trauma.
“Pressure is fine,” Dressel said. “It’s when that pressure turns into stress that it becomes a problem … It’s up to me whether I turn it into stress.”
After two furious laps, he won gold in the 100-meter freestyle in 47.02 seconds, an Olympic record and the fifth-fastest all-time.
Stay in the moment.
Simone Biles, 24, succumbed to pressure. She got lost midway through a gymnastic maneuver. She planned to do a 2 1/2 twisting vault, but her mind suddenly stalled after 1 1/2 twists.
“I had no idea where I was in the air,” she said. “I could have hurt myself … It’s honestly petrifying, trying to do a skill but not having your mind and body in sync.”
She stepped away from the competition to protect herself.
Not staying in the moment messes you up.
When Suni Lee, 18, replaced Biles as the favorite to win the women’s all-around gymnastic competition, she couldn’t sleep.
“If I’m being honest, I did not sleep very good last night,” Lee said. “I was just so excited. There was so much going through my head.”
How was she able to overcome her nerves, deliver the performance of her life and win the gold medal?
“I was just telling myself to breathe because in that moment I literally felt like I was going to puke, I was so nervous,” she said.
Stay in the moment.
Giannis Antetokounmpo, 26, polished that pearl of wisdom.
After an intense, pressure-packed Game 5 victory in the NBA Finals, the Milwaukee Bucks were one game away from winning the NBA Championship.
The Milwaukee Bucks star said: “We have to enjoy the moment, but the job is not done, we have to realize that. We’ve got to stay in the present …
“We’ve got to stay humble. We’ve got to be in the present and stay humble as much as possible. When this team is humble, this team is very, very dangerous. We play our best when we are humble.”
Then Giannis pronounced the sports quote of the decade:
“When you focus on the past, that’s your ego. When I focus on the future, that’s my pride. I try to focus in the moment, in the present. That’s humility, that’s being humble.”
Meditation wins the Moment
Meditation makes you humble. It puts you in a state of selflessness. When you meditate, you act humbly, without a self.
“You” are not there.
The only thing present is your skills, your actions, your breath.
Your ego is gone. Your pride is gone. Your nerves are gone.
Your True Self has a chance to shine through.
Athletes train for years, but their chance to win everlasting glory is reduced to a few minutes.
If those few minutes are clouded by egotistical concerns and polluted by self-centered thoughts, the athlete fails.
Fans don’t want to root for a self-seeking ego.
Fans wants to root for the True Self — because the True Self is what humanity shares in common.
Buddhism calls it the Dharmakaya, the Great Body of the Buddha.
When an Olympic athlete wins gold, we all win gold. When Suni Lee stands on the gold medal platform, we feel a twinge of happiness and shed a tear because that’s not Suni Lee, that’s you and me. That’s the quintessence of humanity.
In Buddhist meditation, as soon as one thought or sensation arises, we fall into dualism.
We lose our natural state of unity and peace.
We lose the moment.
Buddhism keeps it really simple:
Breathe deeply all the time.
Tranquilize.
Return to a state of unity.
Then all our actions will win gold.
The Buddha Times 