Tennis as Practice

Tennis is quite a big part of my daily life -- not only do I play tennis a lot, I am also very addicted to getting better all the time: I am shadow swinging my stokes all the time, practicing my split step while walking, and watching a lot Youtube videos to improve my game. In a sense my attachment to tennis is just the opposite of my spiritual practice, according to which nothing is worth clinging to. Yes my clinging to tennis does cause a lot sufferings for me and I am quite mindful of this, but that's not I am going to talk about here, instead I wanted to write a bit about how my practice help my tennis game, or how I use playing tennis as my practice.

At a high level here are the connections I see between tennis and Zen:

• Skills cultivation and discernment
• One stroke at a time
• The art of letting go
• Concentration and calmness
• Overcoming of the doubt (The importance of confidence)
• Overcoming of the fear
• Overcoming of the anxiety and building mental toughness during matches

Each item above probably needs its own post to expore it, so I will use this post as a place holder at the time being.