What A Snowboarder Can Teach Us About Zen

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Friday, March 5th, 2010 Subscribe To Our Feed

There is no question that meditation is beneficial and can help us learn to induce a peaceful state of mind. Many meditators, however, are taught to try to remain in that meditative state of mind throughout the day. They may be doing themselves a disservice, though. Trying to limit oneself to that meditative state of mind can be like putting one’s conscious awareness into a box.

Zen Buddhists of some schools emphasize the greater importance of ‘mindfulness’ over the meditation. The difference is that mindfulness is the cultivation of the ability to go about your everyday lives in a heightened state of awareness. They say that when you are meditating, you should meditate, but that when you eat, you should just eat.

This is a way of saying that the goal is to live life moment-by-moment. This can be done even under extreme circumstances. In fact, many people have had their first experience of mindfullness when engaged in extreme sports and they have found themselves facing death.

Extreme snowboarders don’t want to die. They take protective measures not to, but in certain circumstances, a Giro ski helmet is useless. The only thing that is going to save a snowboarder’s life in a truly ‘extreme’ moment is his ability to act on instinct.

Emotions like fear and even rational thought are useless and even reduce your ability to perform when you are racing down a ski slope. When you are trying to outrun an avalanche, this is doubly true. A snowboarder’s experience is a good case in point. When he realized that an avalanche was about to swallow him whole, something happened inside him. His mind became still and calm and it was as if he was a very alert but disinterested observer of all that was going on around him. He even said that he remembered observing his brown boots and wondering why he had bought brown snowboarding boots instead of another color!

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.

Meditation alone cannot produce lasting detachment. Mindfulness is achieved through living through all of life’s experiences in a state of detachment. Clinging to any emotion, not matter how ‘blissful, ‘ is somewhat misguided. Enlightenment is not a mood - it is far more than that.

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