Comments on “Buddhism and football”

I was taken to San Francisco when I was 7 by my parents on a holiday in 1980. I was given a 49ers T-shirt, and four years later I was watching TV at home in Britain and saw that the NFL was on British telly. The 49ers won, and I remembered that holiday and that T-shirt - remembered seeing Candlestick Park from across the water and being impressed by the effort, the engineering, the passion made manifest in that sporting cathedral. I became a Niners fan that day in my living room. I guess I was born one. That is to say, I didn’t really apply any great logic or comparative criteria to my choice - in particular I didn’t find out which side was the ‘most popular’, or who played the most ‘authentic’ brand of football - maybe back then if I had I would have been a Cowboys or Redskins fan. Back then I made a kind of promise - to be a 49er, whatever happened. Regardless of how I got here, every weekend during the regular season ever since, I follow the team - watching when UK TV permits. And, regardless of how I feel after the final whistle - I’m a Niners fan. When I sit with my Football friends and talk about the game, we compare our various favoured teams - their similarities, their differences, what inspires us, what confuses us - but, I remain a Niners fan. Joe Montana was the best QB ever to play. Bill Walsh was the most clinical head coach - and inspiration to generations of coaches ever since. Roger Craig revolutionised the HB position. My friends disagree - because they and I support different teams, but we don’t fight or brawl - we all recognise that we each in our own way keep the faith. We recognise that our faiths differ in form, but not in their essential nature. No idea if I’m a good guy, or a bad one, but I’m a 49er. I was born a Niner - and I’ll die one - and any sports fan anywhere in the world will recognise and support that kind of commitment. So, the good thing about football - about any sport - is that commitment is absolute, and is respected as such. Shame that doesn’t seem to happen so often in people who purport to be religious. Certainly doesn’t appear to happen on e-sangha.

Support the gö-kar-chang-lo’i-dé in the West - www.drala-jong.blogspot.com.

Enthusiasm and denigration (i.e. negative enthusiasm) are both intrinsically meaningless, whether, as you point out, the enthusiast is an ignoramus or alternatively an expert. They are meaningless in the sense that any karmic response is fundamentally empty.

On the other hand, this means that therefore they can be liberated. This View transfigures any inchoate upswelling of emotion into a fabulous wealth of practice opportunities. Which means you could find a tantrika at a football match yelling as much as anyone else, though whether able to practise with that at the same time would be a moot point of the individual’s capacity.

The ability to practise would be reflected in respect for the matching enthusiasm of the opposition. This would be the Mirror-like Wisdom of the Water element, in which one recognises one’s ‘enemy’ as none other than the image of oneself, and any potential for aggression self-liberates in that clarity and into that clarity. The palpable sense of difference and sameness coinciding is a wide-open window of opportunity into the non-dual state.

Between Buddhist lineages one might reasonably expect to find that understood as a principle sooner than between rival football fan clubs.

I would like to add a few words for any Europeans that happen to come across this page.
I find the meaning in (American) football in the contrived drama. For the players who are playing for big money outcome is very important. For most of us fans it is simply entertainment. I must admit that I am at times concerned that as a fan I promote 110 kilo players running in to each other at high speed. When children play (American) football it is a fun game. But when really big a strong people are crushing each other there are a lot of injuries. I do wonder whether at that level it is still fun or if it just a high paying job for the athletes. So are us fans contributing to a kind of less violent version of the Roman Colosium? Perhaps we are guilty.
But, back to the drama. It comes not just from the final score but from the journey of reaching that final score. When an American football squirts out of a players hands and creates a scramble for the ball by all the players on the field sometimes really funny things happen.
Each game is a work of art created by the teams on the field. Although the players want to win I can not help but think that they take some satisfaction in the role that they play creating this work of art even when they lose.

Now there’s a name that’s some kind of implicit teaching in itself: a lineage out of Italian opera [Tosca] X ‘Carlos Castaneda’ [the fictitious sorcerer’s apprentice] convened to consider the drama of futbol…
Wonderful! Sport was never so interesting, ‘ere now.

I have felt sports funny like this for the longest time and definitely see the connection to religion.

See my post: Sports Allergy (if you wish)

Can your refer me to a listing of the “Root Vow”?
Curious too how to distinguish “analyzing”, “criticizing”, “questioning”, “challenging” and “denigrating” a faith? Or was that just meant playfully as the :-) seems to imply.
My curiousity is because I think there is a balance between these approaches but I struggle with it.

I see that Ngakpa Namgyal Dorje’s link is in the site – thus he is an Aro practitioner.
Are there other Aro practitioners besides you that have personal web sites? It would be nice if Aro commentors put “(Aro)” after their name.