14 Jul Soul Surfing and SUP Yoga
A philosophy of surfing that can be applied to our AY Practice is soul surfing. It’s the perfect art or icon of the peace that both Confucius & Lao Tzu taught. Soul surfing gives us the deep, peaceful stoke that both Confucians & Taoists seek & find in other more landlocked ways.
The other type is called macho surfing. It’s an ego trip, it’s competitive. Soul surfing is a way to lose our ego or at least our ego-consciousness. The macho surfer surfs to show off; the soul surfer surfs to show off the wave. The macho surfer surfs to conquer; the soul surfer surfs to be conquered. The macho surfer thinks waves exist for surfers; the soul surfer thinks surfers exist for waves. The macho surfer wants to humanize the ocean; the soul surfer wants to oceanize humanity.
Lao Tzu would have made a great surfer & SUP yogi. His advice for life is advice for surfing & SUP Yoga because Tao is like the sea. Dance w/ it but let it lead. Ride it, don’t fight it. Be relaxed, not rigid. Paint w/ the grain, not against it. Don’t try to carry it, let it carry you. It’s neither your slave nor your slave master. Don’t assert yourself & you will find yourself. Die to yourself & you will live. Disappear: that gives you the highest stoke of all, for that’s what Tao does. Yield, even to riptide. Especially to riptide; that’s the only way to survive it.
If we surrender to this wave of Tao, we become it. Then we become as active & as powerful as the wave because we are now the wave or a part of it or in it. Surfing gives us the same supra-rational state of blissful consciousness we get from SUP Yoga & Meditation. We become one w/ everything.
Surrender to the sea is not just loss of control. It’s that but it’s also gaining control at the same time for we have become water & now know how to flow serenely & powerfully at the same time. We’re both strong & gentle.
The macho man’s mistake isn’t his love of strength & power. His mistake is his assumption that he has to choose either strength or gentleness, & his assumption that surrender to Tao is weakness instead of strength. But it takes strength to surrender & not a lot have the strength to do that.
That’s why we practice.
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