Shambhala Football Season.pdfShambhala Football Season
January 8, 2013
A man without a ‘football’ game to watch is a man who doesn’t know why he’s here if there’s no football. ‘Imagine there’s no heaven or hell’, as the singer of the Beatles, John Lennon was famous for singing! Imagine what the world would be like if there were no football? Would millions of men be more lost than most people are anyway. Now on TV the obsession with football is so intense that they have little tykes of 5 or 6 dressed with helmet, shoulder pads and all playing as parents cheer them on. Is football the ‘shambhala’ of modern man, or is modern man really just the same neanderthal from centuries ago with more toys and diversions?
Shambhala is, in Tibetan and Indian Buddhist traditions, a mythical kingdom hidden somewhere in Inner Asia. Whatever it’s historical status, Shambhala gradually came to be seen as a ‘pure land’ in Buddhism. Shambhala stands for a spiritual land of harmony and the divine.
Sports are wonderful for participants and viewers, but the obsession with fans has become equivalent to a drug where the world becomes skewed to the extent that millions forget that they can be more than a viewer. Worship of athletes and sport is just infantile. Sports is a small part of why we are alive at this unique period in history, millions make it a seeming reason to be alive. On the other side, of course, are women who make ‘shopping’ a major reason for living. As long as the world becomes consumed by the ‘outside’ entertainments, innertainment will continue to be ‘what’s that’? Seems the whole world is invested in the outer illusion.
Footballs are filled with empty air as are most minds and hearts. In Ecclesiastes of the Quran and Bible, it says, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.”
Now is the time to fill the soul with love and compassion as we learn who we really are. Be a rabid fan of that, not endless talk and viewing of all outer that becomes nonsense in it’s going viral in the head! Shambhala is a seed in you, hidden in the sacred part of the heart waiting for you to grow, sew and spread the seeds of it’s effervescence.
Arhata
