The Zen of Surfing Prevents the Wandering Mind
I have always had a hard time accepting organized religion.
Take away the wars, or the judgments, or the politics that goes behind religion; all that is bad enough.
I simply cannot understand how, if God does indeed exist, an infallible Deity would conjure up such elaborate messages and stories in books like the Bible and Koran that are full of fallacies.
In other words, I simply cannot find peace and harmony in something that makes blanket statements and raises far too many questions without providing adequate answers.
For someone who considers himself to be a critical thinker, the math simply doesn’t add up.
Which is why I find spiritual happiness in the philosophical way of life that is Taoism.
Not everything written in the Tao Te Ching makes perfect sense mind you; then again, nothing really is perfect now, is it. However, it is the central message of Taoism that I strongly believe is crucial to finding harmony and inner-peace within all human beings.
The message of being in the present, of living in the now.
It is this way of being that connects so many surfers, because when you find yourself lost in thoughts of past and future, all one needs is to paddle out, connect directly to nature, and find yourself directly in the present, searching for the next set while either paddling for your life or enjoying the beautiful surroundings.
It’s extremely difficult not to be in the present when you’re out in the ocean, focused on the task at hand. It is this experience that brings sanity to my mind the most.
I am not alone in this belief. Professor Jack Reilly of California State University Channel Islands instructs a course he founded called Zen of Surfing that teaches the correlation between natural elements and human senses.
It is in this thinking that when someone once asked what it is about surfing that makes it such a unique experience, my response was, “I have developed a very limited ability to harness the earth’s energy and use it to travel at high speeds up and down a moving surface of water. Pretty cool.”
Pretty cool indeed.
I write all this because of an article recently published that details how the wandering mind brings unhappiness to most people. According to the story, nearly half of people questioned by psychologists with Harvard University’s Science journal said that their minds wandered most of the time.
“A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind,” wrote Harvard University psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert. “The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.”
The story went on to say that most of the people surveyed found themselves to be at most in the present when they engage in the act of sex.
I’ve always said that a life filled with surfing and sex is a blissful life.
The next time you find yourself unhappy with no relief in sight, grab a board and paddle out. Or at a minimum, find something that connects you with nature, while keeping you in the present.
While surfing may not cure all of life’s problems, at least it can help put the mind at ease.
Even if just for a few moments.
Originally published at blog.sfgate.com on November 18, 2010.
