RSS FeedsMindfulness And The Art Of Snowboarding
Many meditaion teachers tell their students to cling to the feelings of peace and tranquility they feel after meditating as they go about their daily activities. There is some merit to this, of course, but clinging to a feeling, even a deeply satisfying one, tends to limit one’s ability to experience the plenitude of experience.
Some schools of Zen take a somewhat different approach. Buddhist mindfulness stresses the cultivation of the ability to do and feel whatever you’re experiencing with complete detachment. The way they put it is, ‘When you practice dhyana (meditation), practice dhyana. When you sit down and eat, sit down and eat.’
An extreme example of mindfulness in action is the oft-cited experience of extreme athletes who have found themselves in life and death situations. While they were not seeking a ‘mindfulness’ experience, it seems that is what happened.
A Giro ski helmet isn’t going to be of much comfort to a snowboarder when he’s flying down a near-vertical slope. At speeds like that, his life is going to depend on all the hours of practice he’s put into his sport and the reflexes and automatic responses he has cultivated.
At speeds like that, you must live in the moment, or fear just gets in the way of performance. One snowboarder described a run he made that became a life-or death-run when he had to outrace an avalanche. ‘It was as if time stood still, ‘ he said. ‘I felt no fear. I didn’t have time to think, either. It was as if my mind became very quiet and my body just did what it had to do and I just observed what was happening. In the middle of all the chaos, I remember looking down at my brown boots and wondering briefly why I had chosen that color. I was that calm.’
The snowboarder outran the avalanche and made it safely to the bottom of the slope. When he realized he was out of danger, he remained in that place of pure awareness for a few minutes, until he looked at his digital sport watch and was shocked to see that only a few minutes had passed since the beginning of his race for life. Had someone asked him, he would have guessed an hour or more.
Extreme mindfulness like this is achievable, but not just through clinging to that nice blissful feeling you get after a good meditation. Clinging to any kind of phenomenon, even the most pleasant, limits your awareness. True enlightenment is likely to come via the cultivation of complete detachment.
