Become The Ball

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” – Franz Kafka, novella The Metamorphosis

if you don’t become the ocean
you’ll be seasick
every day -from the poem, “Good Advice For Someone Like Me” by Leonard Cohen

In his masterpiece, The Inner Game Of Tennis, (a must read for any artist, trust me it goes waaay beyond tennis) author Timothy Gallwey talks about the importance, yet inherent difficutly, of true concentration. He gives all kinds of practical advice and tips on how best to do so. One strategy he espouses is to “watch the ball.” But not watching in the traditional way we might think. Rather, to watch it so intently that one almost falls in love with the ball. Or “becomes the ball.” Gallwey writes about Bakhti yoga which aims at “perfect concentration through devotion.” A story from the book…

A seeker after Truth sought out a yoga master and begged him to help him achieve the enlightenment of perfect union with his true self. The Master told him to go into a room and meditate on God for as long as he could. After two hours the seeker emerged distraught, saying that he could not concentrate, since his mind kept thinking about his much beloved bull he had left at home. The Master then told him to return to the room and meditate on his bull. This time the would-be yogi entered the room and after two days had still not emerged. Finally the Master called for him to come out. From within the seeker replied, “I cannot; my horns are too wide to fit through the door.” The seeker had reached such a state of concentration that he had lost all sense of separation from his object of concentration.

Makes you wonder…maybe the reason why Gregor Samsa turned into a giant bug is that he just concentrated on it so much.

P.S. – “Be the ball Danny.”