before I get too deep

I'm reading The Inner Game of Tennis right now. I attended a jazz "band camp" (hee hee) when I was in high school and one of my teachers recommended it to me for it's philosophical approach that can be applied to playing music. It's only taken me 12 years to get around to it.

The book talks about avoiding negative judgments in your playing, and this can be applied to tennis, music, or any complicated task or hobby. (Hobbit? No.) Point being, one would be better served to observe then to criticize. The line judge in a tennis match doesn't say "that ball was out, and boy, your backhand sucks," or "that ball was in, and you are a much better player than your opponent." By avoiding these judgments we can avoid mental pratfalls, and the snowball effect that comes with beating yourself up (aren't the challenges of the game, and a willing and occasionally able opponent trying to beat you enough?).

I teach guitar and piano lessons. Applying the ideas of the Inner Game to teaching is really intriguing to me. The problem is, I feel that I need to learn how to get out of the way, and let the student teach themselves. No matter who your teacher is, the individual always teaches his or her own self best.

It seems to me that it's impossible to improve at a task without having positive and negative reinforcement. Without a sense of what quality is, and therefore "good" and "bad", there's nothing to teach. I suppose the trick of applying the ideas of the book as a teacher are to get the student to get past judgment and get to observation. I guess this means I'll have to stop saying things like "you messed up the fourth measure, and this means you are a very bad person."

My final pondering for the day is related, and one that I've wondered about for a while. It relates to the four truths of Buddhism. There's a more detailed explanation on that link, but it says the truths are:

Life is suffering.

The origin of suffering is attachment.

The cessation of suffering is attainable.

The path to the cessation of suffering.

This fourth truth seems to be a sentence fragment to me at first glance, but that's not the part that bothers me. What bothers me is what place do achievement and quality have in Buddhism? Without hard work and ambition would we have a cure for polio, Michael Jordan, or Apple MacBook computers? Doesn't the existence of excellence lessen the amount of suffering the rest of us experience? I imagine that many successful and ambitious artists, athletes, and entrepreneurs don't follow these four truths and have a hard time dealing with life when their heyday is in the past. Are the people who achieve excellence martyrs for humanity?

I try to approach my career from a Buddhist point of view. I don't crave fame or wealth (except for the necessary wealth to purchase a new saxophone, pay rent, get sushi from time to time, and see an occasional movie). I crave the ability to keep going, to write better music, to be inspired, and to communicate.

Does the Dalai Lama have a myspace page? What are the chances he checks his own mesages? What are the chances he'll read this blog and add me as a friend?

Until next time...

Go Lakers.

Om.