The Olympics are on. After years of discipline, months of training and a life spent with single minded focus the athletes arrive at the starting blocks.
We think winning is about beating your opponents, it is the triumph of your skill over everyone’s skills. NO. Most sports are about personal achievement. It is always about beating your own time, beating your performance. It is always about getting better. This ability to conquer oneself is the most precious thing sports bestows.
This is beautifully illustrated by “Kyudo”, the ancient Japanese practice of Zen archery. When the archer is aiming at the target, the tension builds up. Tension in the arms. Tension between the bow and the arrow. Tension in the silence that envelopes him. Tension between the outer world and the inner. And the archer is waiting for the perfect moment, when all the tensions are in balance to “let go” of the arrow.
The Zen Master says, “if the archer waits too long for the right moment, he reaches a point of extreme tension, when he can’t “let go”. And “Letting Go” does not happen because he is so attached. Attached to the anticipation of a result, the fear of losing or the joy of winning and what such outcome means to him and his ego. Attached to his desires and his fears. This “Letting Go” of the attachment to his desires and his fears represents the battle that the archer is fighting within. In the final analysis, the target is “you”, the archer himself.
An excellent performance is ultimately about getting into a “meditative state” where both “action” and “awareness” are merged and “distractions are totally excluded from “consciousness”. There is no thought of success or failure as the performance become an end it itself.
The years of discipline, the months of hard work and life spent with the single minded focus have culminated into this moment. And his being “now and here” in this moment boils down to “letting go of the “past,” of the thoughts of all the hard work that has gone in; and “letting go of the future”, of all his desires, and expectations.
And once that happens all the duality disappears, there is no archer, there is no target, there is no aiming and there is no tension.
This principle is manifest in all the virtuoso performances that enthrall us, in the effortless ease, the grace, the fluidity of motions whether it is in football, in gymnastics or in the performance of a dancer.
The performer becomes just a conduit through which the performance flows. The master says “the dancer disappears, and just the dance remains”.
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