Roger Federer Teaches a Buddhist Lesson
We are reborn in every moment
That's not Roger Federer in the picture, of course. I asked my AI graphics bot to generate an image of a man in Buddhist robes playing tennis. It produced this in about a minute, which may serve as the subject of another post. This one is about Federer's June commencement address at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, which has gone viral.
His speech has received considerable written attention already. As I read one account, though, I sensed a theme that might have come from a Buddhist master.
The tennis great, who won almost 80% of the 1,526 singles matches he played in his professional career, asked the graduates to guess the percentage of points he won. The answer is just 54%.
How could that be? Federer's answer:
When you lose every second point, on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot. You teach yourself to think, "OK, I double-faulted. It’s only a point." When you’re playing a point, it has to be the most important thing in the world, and it is. But when it’s behind you, it’s behind you. This mindset is really crucial, because it frees you to fully commit to the next point and the next point after that, with intensity, clarity and focus.
Moments in our life-stream are like that. We are reborn moment by moment. We approach each moment with all the clarity, compassion, and wisdom that we can muster and then go on to the next moment.
I can hear the question:
Then how do we learn from our mistakes?
The answer is through quiet self-reflection and guidance from teachers, friends, and therapists. Stressing out over the last moment only weakens our fitness for the next.
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