What's The Score

One of the principle tenets of Buddhism is the doctrine of non-attachment. What this tells us is that it is not wise to become too deeply involved with something, or attached to it so that you feel that you can't live without it. Whether it is a thing, or a person or a teaching or whatever. To become so attached hinders our progress along the way. If you consider this teaching carefully, the truth of it soon becomes obvious. What is not so obvious however is that it is possible to be negatively attached to something as well. This means to hate something with the same potency that you love something else. Although this seems to be opposite to attachment, it's disadvantageous effect on our training is the same. Both states of mind hinder our progress.

I personally have to admit that I suffer from this state of negative attachment with regard to nearly all kinds of sport. The one I loathe most of all is English football. As a practicing Buddhist, I know that it is not good for my own development to feel so strongly about something. It means that my mind is not in balance, not in harmony if you like, and I have spent a great deal of time thinking about why I feel this way. The conclusion that I have reached is that it is because all kind of sport generates the spirit of competition. This is more apparent in football than other sports because it is obvious from the way that the fans go crazy when their side scores a goal, that their sense of competitiveness is very strong. It even spills over into the streets when the mindless game is finished and rival groups of fans confront each other, looking for a fight and thereby costing the taxpayer money to maintain a police presence to control them. Though it isn't quite as obvious with other sports, in the sense that you don't usually get cricket or rugby fans kicking hell out of each other, the sense of competition is still there.

There is no doubt about it; being competitively minded is not good for spiritual progress. To feel competitive means that you feel that there is someone or something to compete with. That you are different from me and you want to assert that difference and show that you are better in some way tha
I am. Your sense of ego may feel threatened or in another way subdued when it meets my sense of ego, and it doesn't like that feeling, and so it offers a challenge, which may be in the form of a competitive sport, or perhaps a simple argumentative confrontation. Whatever challenge is offered, it is just your sense of ego that is doing the challenging. It is not you. You are not your ego; in fact there is no such thing in reality as ego. However, for something that doesn't exist, it certainly causes a lot of trouble in your life.

If you truly want to progress along the spiritual path, (and every astute person would want to), then you must discard this false notion of a separate, individual self, lose your spirit of competition, and strive to help other living beings instead of competing with them. There is no need to assert your superiority over another being, whether it is human or other animal form, because you are not superior, nor is he superior to you. All are equal, all are one, and nothing else exists. In order to make this a reality for you, it is necessary to get rid of that spirit of competition that you have prized so highly. The sense that your football team is better than another team. That mindless ego that makes you shout and cheer when some grossly overpaid player manages to propel that silly bag of air made from some poor cows' hide, into a trajectory that results in it going in a direction that scores a "goal." So what?

As long as the competitive spirit endures, the sense of individualised ego will continue. There will thus be rich and poor, war famine and pestilence. Until we realise that this was not the way that the Ete
al, (God if you prefer), intended us to live, we shall not have peace of mind or peace in the world.