Theos-Talk Archives (September 1994 Message tl00039)

Hello Frank, and the others.

You wrote:

> But consider this: Master Cheng Man Ching, when asked for the
> secret of his fantastic success as a tai chi player, replied that
> it was simply the eradication of all ego feeling while he was
> sparring with opponents.

Yes you are right, this is just the opposite of what happens in
sports.  The Asian martial arts and systems such as Yoga are far
from sports.  The only common thing is, that they deal with
physical body and movements.  The motive is different.  If you
ask what is a Tai Chi master's goal, you probably get long list
of various philosophical and spiritual reasons and also some
health reasons, try the same question to some athlete coach and
see the difference.

I want to stress my definition of word "sports".  I take that
word in a meaning: "A Physical exercise to which people commit
with competitive attitude."

It is mainly the competition, the urge to compete, win, to be
better, which is the real drive and motive behind most of
"sports".  Without these motives we would not have these myriad's
of sports.  So, by my view, sports is a contaminated word because
of it s use.  To speak of other physical exercise, we have words
such as "dance", etc.  I don't find a good, single English word
for these activities, but, "Physical exercise".

> If you should visit the United States in the near future, do
> yourself a favor and avoid television news programs.  Our present
> ratio is about 35% hard news, 35% fluff and 30% SPORTS.  I fear
> you would suffer a loss of temper that would set you back five
> incarnations!

I'm sure that would happen.  But since I know that, I don't watch
television, I also try to avoid any kind of mass-media for
various reasons.  I sent earlier a post about mass-media, I think
you were not on the list then.

> a primary human drive.  Freud did state, though, that viewing
> competitive sports did provide a vicarious discharge of
> aggression for the masses, thus siphoning off some of the
> aggression that would otherwise be expressed directly in behavior
> toward others.  Freud felt that this was pretty much the best
> that we could hope for in terms of containing the masses.

Aggression is one of those animal-qualities in us that is a
remnant of the past.  Our task is now to get rid of that, and
some other bad qualities.  Common sense says, at least to me,
that if we practise some skill, we get better at it, not to get
rid of it .  So when you practise aggression at sports, it
increases your aggressiveness.  It creates aggressiveness, not
makes it less.  This can be noticed, by simply observing sport
audience and the atheletes in action.

   Peace, aki.

   Oulu. Finland.
P.S.  I'm sorry Lewis and Frank, in my previous post I meant
Frank's not Lewis's comment of sport news.