surfing is...
it’s not always about clean waves. surfing sometimes is about suffering through storm surges shortly after the fronts move through. the whole time paddling to stay away from stray sets and maybe, just maybe if I’m lucky to get the right one come my way, I go, and it’s good.
other times it’s about waist high little peelers –steep enough to speed me down the line drawing subtle lines across the small wavescape. one after the other the experiences add up to nothing, so quickly the memory fades from one ride to the next.
other times the pulse is strong and the swell stacks on the horizon like rows of energy moving through space. the crowd thinned by skill level and sometimes timidity. sometimes surfing is swinging around last minute for late take-offs. “damn I’m not gonna make it….” and then for the next ten minutes I'm bounced around like lotto balls at midnight, through the rock garden on the inside until the current lets go and I can make my way out front again.
surfing is not static.
it is not dictated by governing body.
there is no way to document mentally my experience.
it is in fact simply put –experience.
it is the moment of allowing intuition to take over -and muscles, bones and tendons to connect with neurons to ride time as it moves through space.
it is transcending sense perception and thought without the Buddha or the bahgavad gita.
it is experience and nothing more.
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5 comments:
I don't know about Hindus but Buddhists might argue you are Buddha in those moments. But I agree, you don't need religious instruction, dogma, theories or ritual. Surfing can obviously, bring someone to 'now' without confusion or anxiety about the future and past and to a deeper connection to natural rythms of life.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi found it in 'Flow.' Arne Naess found it in Deep Ecology.
The problem with surfing is, once the wave is over, the desire to get another one is so intense, your mind is immediately clouded over again, unless you can train it to linger in that place you only get a glimpse of while actually riding a wave.
"The problem with surfing is, once the wave is over, the desire to get another one is so intense..."
is this a problem with surfing or with our human condition? desire is is our curse and our muse.
what's hard for me is appreciating the life I have, the moments of beauty. desire, maya, cravenness -how do we transcend it?
nothing more and so much more
Ras, you are correct, the grasping is not 'surfing's' fault, it is a human condition but I find surfing really bring's it out. Maybe, the challenge to let go, is all the more profound because of it.
My last session certainly had little to do with clean surf...
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