King Emmanuel
01-03-2014, 08:45 AM
As we prepared for the playoffs, I thought it might be a useful for the players to have a refresher course on selfless basketball, but this time from a different perspective – that of the Buddha. So I devoted one of our practice sessions to talking about the Buddha's thinking and how it applies to basketball. I probably lost some of the players early on, but if nothing else, the discussion took their minds off the pressure of the upcoming postseason.
In a nutshell, the Buddha taught that life is suffering and that the primary cause of our suffering is our desire for things to be different from the way they actually are. One moment, things maybe going our way, and in the next moment they're not. When we try to prolong pleasure or reject pain, we suffer. On the bright side, the Buddha also prescribed a practical way for eliminating craving and unhappiness by following what he called the Noble Eightfold Path. The steps were right view, right thinking, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
I thought the teachings might help explain what we were trying to do as a basketball team.
1. RIGHT VIEW – involves looking at the game as a whole and working together as a team, like fives fingers on a hand.
2. RIGHT THINKING – means seeing yourself as part of a system rather than as your own one-man band. It also implies going into each game with the intention of being intimately involved with what's happening to the whole team because you're integrally connected to everyone on it.
3. RIGHT SPEECH – has two components. One is about talking positively to yourself throughout the game and not getting lost in aimless back talk („I hate the ref,“ „I'm going to get back at that bastard“). The second is about controlling what you say when you're talking with others, especially your teammates, and focusing on giving them positive feedback.
4. RIGHT ACTION – suggests making moves that are appropriate to what is happening on the floor instead of repeatedly showboating or acting in ways that disrupt team harmony.
5. RIGHT LIVELIHOOD – is about having respect for the work you do and using it to heal the community rather than to simply polish your ego. Be humble. You are getting paid a ridiculous amount of money to do something that's really simple. And fun.
6. RIGHT EFFORT – means being unselfish and exerting the right amount of energy to get the job done. Tex Winter says that there's no substitute for hustle, and my addendum is, if you don't hustle, you'll get benched.
7. RIGHT MINDFULNESS – involves coming to every game with a clear understanding of our plan of attack, including what to expect from our opponents. It also implies playing with the precision, making the right moves at the right times, and maintaining constant awareness throughout the game, whether you are on the floor or on the bench.
8. RIGHT CONCENTRATION – is about staying focused on what you are doing at any given moment and not obsessing about mistakes you've made in the past or bad things that may happen in the future.
:tu nice, all of that describes Kobe very well
In a nutshell, the Buddha taught that life is suffering and that the primary cause of our suffering is our desire for things to be different from the way they actually are. One moment, things maybe going our way, and in the next moment they're not. When we try to prolong pleasure or reject pain, we suffer. On the bright side, the Buddha also prescribed a practical way for eliminating craving and unhappiness by following what he called the Noble Eightfold Path. The steps were right view, right thinking, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
I thought the teachings might help explain what we were trying to do as a basketball team.
1. RIGHT VIEW – involves looking at the game as a whole and working together as a team, like fives fingers on a hand.
2. RIGHT THINKING – means seeing yourself as part of a system rather than as your own one-man band. It also implies going into each game with the intention of being intimately involved with what's happening to the whole team because you're integrally connected to everyone on it.
3. RIGHT SPEECH – has two components. One is about talking positively to yourself throughout the game and not getting lost in aimless back talk („I hate the ref,“ „I'm going to get back at that bastard“). The second is about controlling what you say when you're talking with others, especially your teammates, and focusing on giving them positive feedback.
4. RIGHT ACTION – suggests making moves that are appropriate to what is happening on the floor instead of repeatedly showboating or acting in ways that disrupt team harmony.
5. RIGHT LIVELIHOOD – is about having respect for the work you do and using it to heal the community rather than to simply polish your ego. Be humble. You are getting paid a ridiculous amount of money to do something that's really simple. And fun.
6. RIGHT EFFORT – means being unselfish and exerting the right amount of energy to get the job done. Tex Winter says that there's no substitute for hustle, and my addendum is, if you don't hustle, you'll get benched.
7. RIGHT MINDFULNESS – involves coming to every game with a clear understanding of our plan of attack, including what to expect from our opponents. It also implies playing with the precision, making the right moves at the right times, and maintaining constant awareness throughout the game, whether you are on the floor or on the bench.
8. RIGHT CONCENTRATION – is about staying focused on what you are doing at any given moment and not obsessing about mistakes you've made in the past or bad things that may happen in the future.
:tu nice, all of that describes Kobe very well