I picked up a little book a few years ago when my boys were probably too young to absorb the thought contained within. We just moved a week ago and this book, forgotten somewhere, just happened to end up sitting on the table in the computer room -- the only book there. Weird, huh? I picked it up and looked at the back cover again to remind myself of why I'd bought it in the first place.
Later in the morning, I took the boys to the gym to throw a bit (it's monsoon season over here - loads o' rain every day) and, after their first two sets of pitches, threw out some of the wisdom contained in the aforementioned book. The boys, now 18 and 15, understood what I was saying and put it into practice right away. They really focused....and they just started bombing their targets, hitting their spots.
The book is "Zen in the Art of Archery". Though Archery is in the title, the info within can really be applied to anything where there's a target. In short, the book teaches you how to get out of your own way ("clear the mechanism").
From the back cover:
"In the case of archery, the hitter and the hit are no longer two opposing objects, but are one reality. The archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bulls-eye which confronts him. This state of unconsciousness is realized only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes one with the [target/goal]......"
There's a lot more to it than that, and a lot more than what I shared with the boys yesterday, but that's the gyst of it. I would guess a good number of successful pitchers (and hitters for that matter) already do something like this, though they wouldn't call it zen. It's been around for awhile and, sadly, these types of 'oriental' things sometimes get a bum rap.
But as my Korean martial arts master used to say when giving us something new, "use, don't use, no matter."
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