The Inner Game of Sumo?

[jpierce@chem.ucsd.edu (John Pierce)]

Somebody mentioned that they are a Buddhist, which reminded me that I've been
meaning to pass along the below story during one of the between-basho lulls.

Probably everyone is familiar with the various "Inner Something-or-Other"
self-improvement sports books that abound: "The Inner Game of Tennis", "The
Inner Game of Golf", "The Inner Game of Kaber Tossing", "The Inner Game of
Fly Fishing for Salmon in Norway in Fjords Above 40 North in December", and
so on. If you aren't, it will suffice to say that they all boil down to 
roughly the same [actually fairly good] advice: Imagine yourself doing an
activity well and your actual performance will improve.

It may surprise you to know that Sumo is the subject of what may be the
earliest of these treatises. I quote from "101 Zen Stories" transcribed
by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki (McKay, Philadelphia) as reprinted in
"Zen Flesh, Zen Bones" by Paul Reps (Tuttle, Vermont and Tokyo).

---
    In the early days of the Meiji era there lived a well-known wrestler
called O-nami, Great Waves.
    O-nami was immensely strong and knew the art of wrestling. In his private
bouts he defeated his teacher, but in public he was so bashful that his own
pupils threw him.
    O-nami felt he should go to a Zen master for help. Hukuju, a wandering
teacher, was stopping in a little temple nearby, so O-nami went to see him
and told him of his trouble.
    "Great Waves is your name," the teacher advised, "so stay in this temple
tonight. Imagine that you are those billows. You are no longer a wrestler who
is afraid. You are those huge waves sweeping everything before them, swallowing
all in their path. Do this and you will be the greatest wrestler in the land."
    The teacher retired. O-Nami sat in meditation trying to imagine himself
as waves. He thought of many different things. Then gradually he turned more
and more to the feeling of the waves. As the night advanced the waves became
larger and larger. They swep away the flowers in their vases. Even the
Buddha in the shrine was inundated. Before dawn the temple was nothing but
the ebb and flow of an immense sea.
    In the morning the teacher found O-nami meditating, a faint smile on
his face. He patted the wrestler's shoulder. "Now nothing can disturb you,"
he said. "You are those waves. You will sweep everything before you."
    The same day O-nami entered the wrestling contests and won. After that,
no one in Japan was able to defeat him.
---

-- John W Pierce, Chem & Biochem, UC San Diego
   jpierce@ucsd.edu