Ornoth

As it spread across Asia and the rest of the globe, Buddhism changed and adapted to the local cultures it encountered; however, Buddhism’s core goal—freedom from suffering—and its core method—contemplative meditation—have perforce remained constant… until recently.

Thus it’s understandable that the 20th Century Westerners who went to Asia would come back with a unique version of Buddhist practice that ought to work better for those of us brought up in the West than the original article. The hybrid Buddhism that we inherited from them had been distilled down to the essentials that would most appeal to educated middle class White people like themselves.

That meant discarding inconvenient concepts and practices such as reincarnation, myths & deities, miracles & supernatural powers, ritual & chanting, merit-making, the more esoteric states of concentration practice, karma, renunciation, non-duality, and non-self. That’s how American Buddhism became divorced from Asian, and enabled a diminished “secular meditation” with all the uncomfortable bits filed off.

That decision made some sense, as several parts of devotional Buddhism are at odds with our Christian heritage or directly contradict universally-accepted scientific laws. But the stylized meditation techniques that have gained such popularity in the American mainstream have also lost sight of the actual purpose and point of meditation practice.

The most facile example of the trendy “Mindfulness Movement” is Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program. Obviously, learning tools to cope with stress is a Good Thing, but I can’t help but be saddened by how much got lost when the goal of meditation was reduced from the “eradication of the root cause of human suffering” to “just help me get through my day”.

It’s as if everyone in Asia had been inoculated with a one-time permanent cure for diabetes, but we Americans have shortsightedly continued carrying blood testing kits and syringes filled with insulin, only treating the symptoms of the chronic disease as they arise day after day.

Another painful example is how big business and professional sports have co-opted meditation as a cheap tactic for “guaranteed career success” and “enhancing peak performance”, promoted by well-heeled management consultants and wealthy athletes like Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Derek Jeter.

I’ve participated in several sittings and talks run by prominent performance-oriented meditation gurus, and always felt deeply uncomfortable. Because at their core, these programs and prescriptions are diametrically opposed to what Buddhist meditation is all about. Whether it’s vanquishing your business or athletic rivals, these techniques are designed to promote selfish desires and goals which reinforce the ego.

In contrast, Buddhism guides the meditator toward the understanding that no worldly attainments can ever provide deep or lasting satisfaction; toward relinquishment of personal desires; and toward freedom from our unexamined enslavement to the insecure demands of the ego.

All too frequently, I hear proclamations from people publicly known as meditation experts that completely set my nerves on edge. In their own literal words, meditation can: lower stress levels, help you drop all distractions that may interfere with winning, enhance peak performance, aid in the reduction of how chronic pain affects the mind, help you cope with the aftermath of a disappointing performance, strengthen your drive, boost your belief in yourself and your ability, build your athletic identity, improve sleep patterns, speed recovery time, enhance endurance, aid in proper fueling, and help control oxygen.

I’m sorry George, but the Buddha had a far more important and fulfilling goal than “speeding recovery time”, “building his athletic identity”, and “controlling oxygen”.

Through tireless self-aggrandizement and promotion, many of these business and sports meditation gurus have grown rich and famous as a result of dispensing their advice. I’m going to leave that contradiction aside however, as it’s too obviously hypocritical to waste time discussing.

Attending these completely secularized meditative self-gratification programs is kind of like taking classes at a prestigious cooking school, but disregarding everything except how to microwave a frozen burrito. It’s such a waste! Buddhism has a larger mission and so much more to offer than empty self-affirmations and greed-reinforcing self-talk.

I’ve also observed that when teachers introduce meditation practices to naïve Westerners, most of the reported short-term benefit is due to peer pressure or the placebo effect. For the practitioners I’ve known, their initial months of meditation were uncomfortable and challenging before things settled down and the practice started producing its slow, gentle results. But Americans have been sold a persistent fable that meditation will produce immediate and noticeable relief; so that’s what people report, after just a few minutes alone with their unruly internal dialogue.

For all these reasons, the majority of Americans think of—and relate to—meditation as if it were just another self-improvement project: a way to be a far more powerful, unshakeable, invincible you.

While there are undeniable positive side effects of long-term meditation practice, it’s not about building up, improving, or perfecting the self; it’s about letting go of the self, and liberation from the tyranny of the ego.

And the ultimate goal of Buddhist meditation—which the Western mindfulness movement has completely forgotten—is the freedom and well-being that results from the eradication of suffering in our lives: something many self-proclaimed “meditation experts” have a vested interest in perpetuating and profiting from.

So let me make sure I’ve got this right:

When this country was founded, New Englanders called themselves Yankees, and our greatest enemies were people who wore Red Coats.

Today, our heroes wear Red Sox, and our greatest enemy is the Yankees.

Huh. Plus ça change.

So the Celtics won the NBA championship, and they won it in championship fashion, with perseverence, character, teamwork, and—as a result— complete dominance of their opponent.

I watched nearly all of the 2008 playoffs from Joe’s American Bar & Grill on Newbury Street. I groaned as the pathetic 37-45 Hawks took the Celtics to seven games in the opening round, followed by another seven-game nailbiter with LeBron James and the fourth-seed Cavs, and a fine six-game contest with the second best team in the league, Rip Hamilton’s Detroit Pistons.

Despite the Celtics having the best record in the league, everyone picked Los Angeles to win the title, including 9 of 10 ESPN analysts. I quietly voted my mind: the Celtics in six. Right on the munny.

I was watching Game 2, with the Celtics up 24, when Joe’s caught fire, forcing everyone out. At least I didn’t have to pay for my dinner! Meanwhile, the Lakers staged a comeback that fell just shy of completion. While Joe’s was closed, I had to watch Game 3 at the Rattlesnake, sitting next to Louie Evans, Boston’s infamous tricycle-driving Woop-Woop Guy.

And then Game 6, back at a crowded Joe’s. None of the bartenders I had become familiar with, and no sign of Dani, the barfly I secretly looked forward to seeing. After ending the first quarter with a mild four-point lead, the Celts took control in the 2nd, distancing league MVP Kobe Bryant and the Lakers by 24.

My routine has been to order supper at the tail end of the 2nd, so I can eat through the break. That was okay when the games started at 6pm, but with games starting at 9pm, that pushed suppertime out to 10:30pm. I’d eaten a plate of chips & salsa after work, so I wasn’t that hungry, and I was kinda tired of meat, so I ordered two ears of corn on the cob and ate them sitting at the bar, to many confused looks from the sizeable crowd.

The final two quarters must have been torture for the petulant Kobe Bryant, because the Lakers had no hope, trailing by more than 40 points, but they still had to spend another 24 minutes on the floor of a raucous Boston Garden, watching Boston’s second string hit an unending sequence of humiliating threes and dunks and alley-oops. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a dominant performance on the court. The Celtics won in true championship style, and there’ll be no apologists accusing them of backing into their title.

And then it was over. Paul Pierce was declared Finals MVP, but not before drenching coach Glenn Rivers with Gatorade. Kevin Garnett knelt at center court and kissed the leprechaun, then hugged Celtic legend Bill Russell. And team owner Wyc Grousbeck dedicated the title to recently-deceased Celtic patriarch Red Auerbach. That’s Celtics Pride.

I remember the first Celtics game I attended, back when I was too young to know what it was about or care. I also remember playing Bas-Ket as a child with players I named Tiny Archibald, Dave Cowens, John Havlicek, M.L. Carr, Cedric Maxwell, Bob McAdoo, and JoJo White, after players of the ’70s. I remember watching the fat Eighties years, rapt by players like Bird, Parrish, McHale, Ainge, Dennis Johnson, and Dee Brown.

And I remember the horrors that befell the team after 1986. Repeated draft failures. Rick Carlisle, Chris Ford, Len Bias, Acie Earl, Reggie Lewis, Rick Pitino, Antoine Walker, and Dominique Wilkins. And Paul Pierce… a real talent who had Celtics Pride, but suffered for a decade with no supporting cast.

Enter Danny Ainge. The same Ainge who was traded from Boston to Sacramento for a guy named Joe Kleine. Now Celtics GM, and architect of deals that brought Boston that supporting cast. Paul Pierce is the only player on the 2008 championship roster who survives from the team that Danny Ainge inherited. Ainge deserves all the accolades that can be heaped upon him for keeping only seven players from last year’s worst team in the league, supplementing the keepers with major league acquisitions, and turning the Celts into this year’s best regular season team and, of course, world champions.

And then there’s Doc Rivers. He has his share of detractors in Boston, especially after last year’s pathetic season. And he has certainly made his share of ludicrous coaching decisions, including many during these playoffs. But he deserves credit for doing one thing right, and it’s one very big thing.

Before this year’s season began, Doc took the team to Rome for a special training camp. He took this diverse group of individual contributors with immense egos, and got them to believe in the importance of defense and team play. He got them singlemindedly focused on one thing—earning an NBA championship—and settling for nothing less. And, most importantly, he got them to appreciate the story of the greatest franchise in professional sports history, and see their own role in it, if they stepped up to the challenge. The same Doc Rivers who played against us for the detestable Atlanta Hawks: he taught these guys Celtics Pride.

And they’ve shown it. They played unmatched team defense. They played through lineup rotations, adversity, and injuries. Through it all, they remained a team, a family working as one toward the only possible goal: lifting their own championship banner to fly with the legendary other sixteen up in the Garden rafters.

Teams and families are not homogenous; they’re made up of people who fill various roles, so even though the Celtics live and die as a team, I want to talk a bit about the players, because each of them showed both individual skills as well as depth of character that make them admirable role models.

I have to start with Paul Pierce, because Celtics fans can identify with him. He joined the Celtics full of pride and hope, and he brought that hope to thousands of fans. Then we struggled together through ten long years mediocrity before this year’s opportunity. That shows the depth of his loyalty to the team. But during that time he also grew as a person and player, becoming the acknowledged leader of the team. In the Finals, he played amazing ball, including suffocating defense against Kobe Bryant, despite suffering a painful knee injury in Game 1. Watching his reaction to finally realizing his—and our—dream is a memory I’ll always treasure.

Kevin Garnett is one bat-ass crazy mutha. The intensity of the desire and emotion he brings is downright scary, like the crazy berserker Picts who used to paint themselves blue and go naked into hand-to-hand battle. He’d been eerily ineffective during the three games in Los Angeles, but came back strong in Game 6 to provide the emotional spark the Celts needed, including an unbelievable line-drive conversion after a foul that will surely appear on posters for years to come as the defining moment of the 2008 Finals.

My impression of Ray Allen is that of quiet, introverted humility tempered by self-confidence. The shooting guard couldn’t find the hoop with Google Maps during the conference finals against Detroit, but he persevered and finally started pouring in threes when L.A. came to town. He, too, overcame adversity, this time in the form of his infant child’s hospitalization, not to mention the eye injury he suffered in the middle of Game 6.

And then there was this Rondo kid at point guard. Could a 22 year old second year player play the leadership role on the floor necessary to get through the playoffs? The questions were doubled after he bruised his ankle in Game 3. The Lakers cheated off him on defense, exploiting his reluctance to shoot from the perimeter, and fans groaned every time he drove the lane, got right to the cup, and passed up the open layup in favor of passing to teammates on the outside. But when he did take shots, he often made them, and his playoff performance was truly admirable, especially considering his limited experience.

Sam Cassell played backup point guard and brought both Finals experience and an offensive spark off the bench.

Eddie House also shared time at point guard, and provided needed offense when Rondo struggled. Between the three of them, they managed to divide the time at this key position without devolving into selfishness.

Kendrick Perkins, the big man in the middle, was an awesome presence defensively and on the boards. The man quietly does his job, and does it superlatively well. Huge unsung hero.

And when it wasn't Perk, it was Leon Powe, whose character, forged in family adversity, is so deep that they made it a halftime story.

And James Posey, Boston’s other Finals veteran, brought perspective, a stifling defense, and a killer three-point shot. Every time the Lakers cheated off him on defense, he made them pay.

So that’s the summary of the 2008 Celtics: a collection of great individuals, forged into a single, unbeatable team.

But what of the future? I think Posey and Ray Allen are the most likely to move on, which would leave Boston with a gaping hole at the shooting guard spot. Will that hurt them next year? Only time will tell, but that’s where I’d focus my effort if I was Danny Ainge.

But for now, it’s time to savor the first Celtics victory in two decades, capped by a dominant, stupendous final game against the old nemesis the Lakers.

Go Green! Awesome job, all around. Thank you for a storybook year.

Do you watch sports? If so, which ones?

Not having a television, I generally can’t watch professional sports without making a significant effort. In fact, sports was one of the reasons why I got rid of my television back in 1994. You see, I asked myself what were the programs that I would go out of my way to watch, and there were only three (two of them sports): Jeopardy, NBA basketball, and NASCAR auto racing. Looking at it that way, I couldn’t justify spending $500 a year on cable just to watch that shit.
 
More recently, there have been a few times that I’ve made the effort to go somewhere to watch television, and those times, too, have been for sporting events: typically the NBA playoffs and the Tour de France. And I’ll occasionally go out to a Celtics game with friends.
 

What/who are your favorite sports teams and/or favorite athletes?

I don’t usually favor teams, but individuals. I have rooted for the Indiana Pacers, mostly because of future hall of famer Reggie Miller. However, I have a large number of professional cyclists whom I hope do well; that list includes local hero Tyler Hamilton, Lance Armstrong, David Millar, Francesco Casagrande, Tom Danielson, Greg LeMond, Bobby Julich, Michael Rasmussen, and many others.
 

Are there any sports you hate?

I don’t hate any, but there are several that I find uninteresting. That list includes just about everything not mentioned above, but at the top of my “boring” list are baseball, football, golf, hockey, college basketball, horse racing, bowling, skating, skiing, drag racing, and many others.
 

Have you ever been to a sports event?

Yes. Not worth getting into.
 

Do/did you play any sports (in school or other)? How long did you play?

For the past five years or so my primary sport has been endurance cycling (and commuting). However I have previously gone through phases of competitive running, soccer, baseball, bowling, and archery. I have also spent a lot of time doing recreational racquetball, billiards, inline skating, golf, swimming, rock climbing, skateboarding, and tons more.