(Photo above by Andrius Simkus / Pexels)
Each day of life is packed with wins and losses, big and small. Did we wake up on time? Did we get the job? Did we let our anger get the best of us? Were we fully present with the people we care about? Buddhism helps us win that most crucial battle in life, the battle with ourselves.
Nothing dramatizes the winning and losing that happens in life like sports. Here are two Buddhist principles that can help us win in life and in the sports we love to play.
Talent is believing in yourself
Each second of a game, a battle is being waged in our hearts. Do we have hope we can win? Do we feel losing is inevitable? Are we too confident we will win and are we losing our intensity and determination because of it?
Chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is a tool to see the Buddhability within our life, our inherent wisdom, courage and compassion. It’s also a tool to win the battle within and choose our Buddhability over our negativity.
Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda describes this process:
Faith is a spiritual struggle against doubt, against a wavering mind. It is the struggle to break through delusion and lack of confidence—which make us think we cannot become happy or that we are hopeless. It is to bring the power of the Mystic Law to well forth from within and establish absolute conviction.
The New Human Revolution, vol. 26, p. 98
Chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is the way to make up our mind that we will be victorious. Of course, it’s completely natural to doubt ourselves and have negativity. We see this even with professional athletes. Former NFL player Josh Scobey shares in this Buddhability interview how chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo allowed him to overcome his negative self-talk in the run up to Super Bowl 40.
Once we chant and resolve to be absolutely victorious, anything is possible. Why? Because we have Buddhability within. Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda writes about the true meaning of talent:
Once, there was a young boy who had an accident that left one of his legs shorter than the other. But his parents never, under any circumstances, discouraged him by saying things like “You can’t do that” or “That’s too hard for you.” They treated him like any other child and encouraged him to play sports. They taught him that he could do whatever he believed he could and that if he failed it was because he had decided to fail before he tried. The boy became a star football player at school, and after graduation he succeeded in society as well. His life is a perfect demonstration of the assertion made by Russian writer Maxim Gorki that talent is believing in yourself, in your own power. This is not some abstract speculation or theory about the triumph of the will. It represents a belief in the latent potential of the human being.
My Dear Friends in America, fourth edition, p. 267–68
Unity is the key to victory
World Cup winner Mia Hamm famously said, “I am a member of the team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion.” Managing our ego and learning to play as a team is perhaps the most crucial and difficult task in sports.
Nichiren Buddhism teaches the principle of “many in body, one in mind.” In other words, we all are different in our personality and skills (many in body), but can win when we are “one in mind” or one in heart, when it comes to our ultimate objective: winning the game.
One of the NBA’s most winningest coach Phil Jackson writes in his book Eleven Rings how he used Nichiren’s principle of “many and body, one in mind” with the 2000 World Champion LA Lakers.
The thirteenth-century Japanese Buddhist teacher Nichiren took a more pragmatic view. He wrote in a letter to his disciples who were being persecuted by feudal authorities that they should chant together “with the spirit of many in body but one in mind, transcending all differences among themselves to become as inseparable as fish and the water in which they swim.” The unity that Nichiren prescribed was not a mechanical uniformity, imposed from without, but a connection that respected the unique qualities of each individual. “If the spirit of many in body but one in mind prevails among the people,” he added, “they will achieve all their goals, whereas if one in body but different in mind, they can achieve nothing remarkable. That was the kind of unity I wanted to foster with the Lakers.
Eleven Rings: The Soul of a Champion, p. 141
How can we become so united that we can achieve something remarkable? Daisaku Ikeda explains:
What is the key to unity? It may seem at first like a contradiction, but the key to unity is for each individual to be self-reliant. Each person must pray earnestly and become strong. As long as we think someone else will do it, we can never build true unity. Depending on others and irresponsibly letting things take their course is certain to result in no more than a weak and ineffectual mob.
The Wisdom for Creating Happiness and Peace, part 3, revised edition, p. 166
In other words, unity doesn’t mean simply deferring to others. Unity is achieved when each team member takes full responsibility for winning—when achieving a common goal becomes more important than our own personal glory or self-preservation. When we take full responsibility for winning, we find the wisdom when to defer to others, when to shoot our shot and how to set up our teammates for the score. “Many in body, one in mind” can be applied to every situation in life from coming together as a community in order to change a neighborhood to uniting as a team to win at work.
Mastering our mind and achieving unity is hard work, but once we achieve it, anything in sports or life is possible.
Become “gold medalist in effort” strong and resilient in both body and mind.
- Daisaku Ikeda