The Competitive Buddha

How to Up Your Game in Sports, Leadership and Life (Book on Buddhism, Sports Book, Guide for Self-Improvement)

Jerry Lynch, Dr. Jerry Lynch

• Publisher: Mango
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781642505900
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Buddha Can Improve Your Sports Performance and Life

"No other person has had more influence on my thirty-six years of coaching than Jerry Lynch."— Missy Foote, Head women's lacrosse coach, Middlebury College

#1 New Release in Coaching Hockey, Tennis, and Eastern Philosophy

The Competitive Buddha is about mastery, leadership, spirituality, and the Kobe Bryant Mamba Mentality. Discover how people from all parts of the world have brought together the Buddha and athletics for greater fun, enjoyment, and pleasure during their performances.

Connect spirituality to sports. Learn what you need to keep, what you need to discard, and what you need to add to your mental, emotional, and spiritual skill set as an athlete, coach, leader, parent, CEO, or any other performer in life. Understand how Buddhism can help you to be better prepared for sports and life, and how sports and life can teach you about Buddhism.

On the court, field, and beyond. Dr. Lynch is an avid runner and biker and he has coached athletes at the high school and AAU level. He earned his doctorate in psychology at Penn State University and has done extensive post-doctoral work in the area of philosophy, Taoist and Buddhist thought, comparative religions, leadership development, and performance enhancement. Dr. Jerry Lynch demonstrates how certain timeless core Buddha values inspire you to embrace and navigate unchartered waters and understand the Buddha-mind and the Kobe Bryant Mamba Mentality.

Become a master coach of your own life. When it comes to leadership and coaching, The Competitive Buddha teaches how the best coaches today use the ancient methods for our modern times. Learn specific strategies and techniques for implementing this special way to guide and lead.

The Competitive Buddha teaches:

• Leadership Skills
• How to use Buddhism as an approach to competition
• How to master athletics and life

Readers who enjoyed Win the Day, Mamba Mentality, or Relentless Optimism will love The Competitive Buddha.

Part Four

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

Mindful Zen Stories to Elevate Your Game

One of my absolute favorite activities to do with my athletic teams to provide insight, perspective, and inspiration about sports and life is to tell compellingly profound Zen Buddhist stories, both ancient and modern, with lessons that often shape how those who listen compete, play, and live.

The great teachers of all time have used parables and stories to convey valuable lessons. My purpose is to pass on ideas and wisdom taught by the Buddha to my athletes. Hopefully from my doing this, they will remember these wonderful tales for many years to come. Buddhism comes from the word budhi, meaning ‘to awaken.’ You can awaken in many different ways, and one of the best is through stories and parables. Stories provide so much; they tug at your emotions, and you tend to connect with them on a personal level. Stories point the way.

These powerful teaching tales, which I incorporate into my work, inspire us all on our journey to use competitive Buddha wisdom to raise the level of our game. They don’t just inform, they entertain. The lessons learned are the fundamental building blocks and essential concepts of the Buddha way. My wish is that by telling these tales, you will strengthen your resolve to be free, gain peace, and perform at higher levels on this masterful journey. With experiential insight derived from these narratives, you will renew your commitment to being a better version of yourself in sport and life.

There is no need to become a Zen master practicing zazen sitting on some mountaintop. Just be you and observe the relevancy of each story to your specific activity and life. These compelling and deep Zen perspectives can give you a refreshingly expanded outlook and insight into the spiritual side of sports. Think of these stories as catalysts and guides that will help you apply the Buddha way to sports, as well as helping you to apply insights from sports to the vicissitudes of life. These tales will encourage, empower, and inspire you to develop a more thorough understanding of yourself, sports, and life on the way to becoming a wiser human being.

These parables and stories were translated into English from a book called Shaseki-shu, written late in the thirteenth century by the Japanese Zen teacher Maju Ichien. Later on, these stories were gathered and compiled by Nyogen Senzaki, a Zen monk, in his book 101 Zen Stories. He worked together with poet and author Paul Reps to compile all these stories into a modern volume called Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. These books are the inspiration and guides from which I chose and wrote my interpretations of the following thirty-two stories.

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

The master of...

Table of contents

• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• When Buddha and Sports Converge
• Buddha Brain, Mamba Mind
• Noble Mindful Leadership
• The Sound of One Hand Clapping
• Epilogue
• Notable Bibliography
• Practicing Gratitude
• About the Author