The Upside and Downside of Ocean Competition by Len Barrow

Surfing competition or any competition can have its upsides and downsides.  As a former US Champion and Professional surfer and coach I would like to explore some of the benefits and pitfalls that can “manifest” when you begin competing and succeeding.

One of the benefits to competing whether SUP racing or surfing is that you can really focus your mind.  In Zen Meditation, one is taught to have an object of meditation.  This is usually ones breath.  When we compete we can use our surfing technique, or stroke technique as the object of our meditation.  This is a good thing as we learn to enhance and use our attention like a flashlight to solve our problems of technique and form.  You can then shift this “acquired attention” to benefit many other areas in life.  I use the benefits of attention partially acquired in competing to ” focus” on many things.  Use see, when we have the ability to keep our attention on just one thing we can analyze it and can come to creative solutions.  I have solved many problems in this method in relation to work, personal relationships and anthropology using this technique (I am a doctor in anthropology  also).  Our primary problem in modern life is that we don’t pay attention, or don’t have the ability to focus our attention for long periods of time.  We Multi-task and grovel our absent mindedly way along the path of life.  This can make us frustrated and sad.  Surfing and Sup competing can ” turn on” our gift of attention.  If we can transfer the gift of attention to other areas of life, we can be happier, and more creative people.

As proof of this, look at Kelly Slater.  No one could rationally argue against Kelly Slater’s freakish ability to observe and understand (pay attention) to any ocean condition.  He has won in 1 foot waves to 30 foot waves at the Eddie Aikau surf meet and this has resulted in his 11 world titles.  What a lot of people don’t know is that Kelly Slater applies his freakish attention to other projects.  He has designed a circular wave-pool that creates a never ending wave when it is turned on.  Kelly created a plan for an alternate to the ASP surf tour that utilizes a different competition format (if he retires, don’t be surprised to see another tour).   Slater created the 2 man, 4 man heat system (Yes it’s possible!!?)  that is used at Pipeline to allow more Hawaii surfers into the event as well as a quick event completion.  He is a genius in my opinion as he uses his attention gained in the ocean, and competition to be creative in life. I don’t know him personally but no one can argue that he has not been a humble and intelligent ambassador for the sport of surfing.   That he stayed humble is amazing which leads to our next segment of the article about the flipside harmful side or of ocean competition.

One of the downsides to competition is that it can transform you into a monster and in many ways destroy your attention-abilities.  One of the most common ways that this happens is after we have repeated competitive success, some of us become arrogant.  This is the complete opposite of the “goal of attention and practice” of Zen tradition.  Just a drop of arrogance destroys any of the “attention -benefit - gains” we have made during our successful competition and training. 

There is the famous story of a competitive surfer in the eighties from California that illustrates my point.  Let us call him “Jon Edward”.  Jon had an amazing talent.  He was a wave magnet which means he could pay attention to the waves so deeply that he was in the right place at the right time to get all the sets.  It was almost as if he had his hand on the telephone to call waves in.  We used to call him “jealously” 1-800-DAIL A BOMB”.  He could summon all the biggest waves in a heat (Big wave in surfing =bomb).  In competition, we call these guys “freaks” in a good way.   As he had repeated success he became exceedingly arrogant.  In Zen, Arrogance turns a person into a Demon, or Hungry Ghost metaphorically.  He soon dropped out of high school and went full time on tour, oddly with huge sponsorships from corporations.  He soon began destroying the top pros and after each success he got more arrogant.  This destroyed his ability to pay attention and  his wheels metaphorically fell off.  He lost his super powers gotten by paying attention suddenly due to his arrogance.  He ended up imploding using his sponsor’s money to finance rabid binges on hard drugs, destroying his mind.

I think the moral of the story is if you start to win and get arrogant and stuck up (Whether in SUP racing or surfing competition); you will lose in the end.  I have seen this time and time again as a professional coach.  If you do well and truly be humble, you can cultivate the gift of attention that you have gained to help yourself and others in many aspects of the life that is ahead of us.    

As some Locals say in Hawaii:  “BE HUMBLE, NO GRUMBLE”……..Lets all pay attention!

The Art of enjoying One-self in the Surf by Len Barrow

The surf world can sometimes seem out of control. Some breaks can be crammed full of all manner of surf craft, surfers with different skill levels and often neurotic personalities. Because of this it is sometimes difficult to enjoy oneself in the surf.

There are ways to solve these problems and enjoy oneself in any crowd or conditions. In fact I never have a bad session in the surf as I have worked on a method of happiness in regards to the surf conditions and crowds, which almost never fails me. I have enumerated them in the following essay.

1. Set realistic expectations for your surf session.

If it is crowded, don’t expect to paddle out and catch a ton of waves. You will just become frustrated, as your expectations will come crashing down.
 I have a method of setting a quota. If it is really crowded, I expect only to catch two good to decent waves. In the mean time I dedicate my concentration (which is developed in Meditation) to enjoying the coolness of the water, the green mountains and I just overall get stoked about being in the water. Any waves that I get above my quota become icing on the cake!

2. Concentrate: Don’t let bad vibes get to you

When the waves are crowded, the worst behavior can manifest in surfers. People become greedy, angry and aggressive. Social hierarchies inevitably develop and we may find ourselves at the bottom of the totem pole. People use various methods both verbal and nonverbal to assert their status. Sometimes surfers “bad vibe other surfers” in this manner. In Zen Buddhist terminology, the surf is filled with Hungry Ghosts and Demons.

Again this is where the power of concentration attained in meditation can turn a good day into a bad day; or turn hell into heaven. If you allow your mind to wander and focus on the bad vibes, you will tune into to every-ones bad trip and become a type of Demon or Hungry ghost in Zen Buddhist terminology. If you cannot control the direction of your attention and be reactive to silly people, you will become a silly person also.

That is why it is important to meditate. Meditation allows one to control the focus of ones attention. If a person can defocus on the aggression and bad vibes and refocus on where the waves are focusing or defocusing, the beautiful scenery, and the miracle of being a surfer in the ocean (a truly amazing fact), and other wonderful phenomena (such as birds, the reef, the blue sky and seaweed), a surfer can turn a crowded “Hell Day” in to a slice of Heaven. Would that not be nice?

3. We are but mirrors

The saying, you reap what you sow, is actually very Buddhist in spirit. Again we must use the power of attention, to “pay attention” to our own behavior. If you are on a long-board or an SUP don’t just paddle to the outside and get every single set. This is fun in the short term yet this type of behavior has bad “Karmic” returns in the long run. Firstly, it is a very uncompassionate thing to do, and Zen Buddhism is based on a great striving for compassion for all beings (yes, even body boarders and beginners). Secondly, this behavior will rebound to you as a type of “curse”.

Surfing is not Capitalism. We need to use our power of attention to regulate the “profit only, who cares about others” or greed aspect of our minds. We all have the seeds in our minds of hyper-competitiveness, and ego-centrism. It is not a good idea to water them, at least from a Zen perspective .

If you are greedy, hogging all the set waves, you are inadvertently letting your uncontrolled attention “water” these destructive seeds and in return you will create a little hell for yourself and others. Surfers will take note of this greed and angry seeds will be watered in their minds. We can say “who cares; that’s their problem”, but when you return to the break you will be faced with a whole cadre of demons who dislike you. Most people are ignorant of this phenomena but it makes perfect sense in a Buddhist world.

If you are kind and compassionate you will not get a lot of waves in the short term but you will water the seeds of happiness for others in the water and eventually get waves in the long term. If you think this is random tree hugger babble, you are mistaken.

I use the “attention” that I have gained in meditation to create a little heaven for myself. For more than a decade, I have tried to be kind to others and wait my turn. People have mirrored this behavior back to me. To this day I can paddle out to virtually any break on Oahu and be greeted by smiles and kindness.

Can you do this in your surf area? If you cannot, it may be in your best interest to check what seeds you are watering in your mind and others.

Remember: You reap what you sow

Aloha Len Barrow

Surfing and the Zen Buddhist Art of Happiness- by Len Barrow

If you are a typical surfer today, you may be faced with a number of frustrating problems in the surf. As time goes on the ocean is getting more crowded with many different types of surf craft. Depending where you are, people can become very aggressive and greedy when it comes to procuring waves. Some surfers go out of their way to “bad vibe” other surfers as they are on different equipment or they are perceived as “outsiders” or “insiders“. This can all add up to a bad surfing experience. Alas, what could possibly be the solution.

As I study Buddhism as an academic, especially Vietnamese Zen, I came to a solution which I use to great effect on a daily basis. In fact this method is so effective that I have ceased to have bad sessions because of this methodology. I wish to share these ideas with you, the reader, and wish that you benefit from them.

Before I dive in to this technique, it is important to get a background of where the ideas and methods come from. The Buddhists have many sutras, or “bundles” of writings. I will briefly describe to you the Abidharma (quite literally translated into “super teaching“ or “super knowledge“) and its general concepts.

The Abidharma was probably written in India around 1,500 years ago. It is striking as it deals directly with psychology and the mind over a millennia before the Westerners came to similar understandings with modern psychology of the 19^th and 20^th century. The Abidharma has been called the Sutra of Buddhist psychology by some.

What it teaches is very simple but profound. For our purposes as surfers and watermen it is most appropriate. The sutra views the mind as an infinite field. In this infinite field there are an infinite number of possible seeds (for a lack of a better translation of Sanskrit into English we shall use the term “seed“). The seeds can manifest in ones mind and most importantly in ones actions given certain causes and conditions. These infinite seeds include jealousy, anger, hatred, frustration, paranoia, greed, agitation, arrogance on one “end” and compassion, altruism, love, patience, joy, peace and equanimity on the other “end”.

This is why Zen Buddhists and Buddhists meditate! They are utilizing the power of concentration to water the proper seeds with attention! It is that simple. Zen Buddhists are just selecting the seeds in their mind that they water. If you water a thorny weed seed it will grow into an ugly thorny weed. If you water a beautiful Lotus seed it will become a beautiful Blooming Lotus.

If you don’t meditate or pay attention you will not be able to recognize the bad seeds and will be lead around life by them like a man who is on an out-of-control horse heading toward the nearest cliff or wall. This is sadly the case for the majority of the people on our planet. They are not in control of themselves, their negative emotions are dragging them around like powerless slaves. I should know, I often slip into angry and jealous ways when I don‘t pay attention to the seeds that I am watering in my mind.

The question arises. How can this be practiced in the surf? I will use an example that happened to me a couple of years back to help illustrate the Abidharma’s effectiveness. I was surfing a break on the Northwest side of Oahu that is relatively un-crowded and localized. This was during the time period when Stand Up Paddling was taking off. There was this guy who would paddle out and consistently get the set waves as on a SUP board you can get into a wave before anyone else can even stand up. My mind began dragging “me” around. I allowed my seeds of anger, frustration and jealousy to be watered by my own mind without even knowing it. It was like I was on auto pilot with no free will; a type of slave if you will. Why? Quite simply I was not paying attention to the seeds that I was watering in my consciousness‘.

In relation to the aforementioned paragraph, it is interesting to note that in Zen Buddhism, beings of Hell do not live somewhere on a different plane of the Universe. In fact in Zen, there are no Gods, nor heaven or hells that are elsewhere. “Demons and devils” live right here and we meet these hell beings or Hungry Ghosts (as the Zen Folk say) right here. There is no “other-where“. There is only now and this place. By not controlling the seeds I was watering in my mind; I HAD JUST BECOME A TYPE OF DEMON FROM A ZEN BUDDHIST PERSPECTIVE. READ ON!

I became a little devil. I hated this guy with a passion. I remember my mind becoming agitated as this man slid into every wave. I became extremely jealous as he seemed to be having the time of his life. He was not a very skilled surfer and I believed that I had more rights than him. I remember having the arrogant thought that as the reigning US Long board Champion that he should be giving waves to me. I was allowing all the destructive seeds of my consciousness to be watered.

Then it all came to a head.

The SUP guy came speeding down on a set wave (in fact a 12 foot face!). He lost control and ran me over at a terrific velocity. All I remember was a loud bang. Then we both cart wheeled underwater often colliding with each other as the bomb wave dragged us underwater.

I came up out of the water wanting to literally kill the guy. He popped up out of the water gasping for air for I believe that he had never gotten drilled that hard in his life, not to mention doing this in tandem with running someone over in such a terrible manner. He was coughing up water and terrified. I was angry and getting drilled by a six foot Hawaiian Size wave was normal for me thus I was not out of breath . In my fury and ready physical condition I was about to launch into a verbal barrage at him or worse.

But I had a flash of insight. For some strange reason the Zen philosophy of the Abidharma floated into my head. I began to concentrate and pay attention to the seeds that I was watering and simply DECIDED TO WATER DIFFERENT, MORE POSITIVE SEEDS. IT WAS THAT SIMPLE. [I JUST CHANGED MY MIND]….. BY WATERING DIFFERENT SEEDS IN MY CONCIOUSNESS THROUGH THE USE OF FOCUSSED ATTENTIONED ATTAINED IN MEDITATION. As I saw terror in the mans face I watered the seeds of compassion in my mind. I automatically put on a little smile and asked if he was Ok. He said he was not. I suddenly felt impatient (as I wanted to get back to the business of surfing good waves) yet I focused my attention on the seed of patience that we all have in our consciousnesses and I offered to help him paddle in. He was understandably perplexed at my attitude but he held on to my nose as I paddled him towards the channel and to then beach.

The day became magical after that. It was as if the weight of the world was off my shoulders. I did not have the seeds of hatred, arrogance, and jealously being watered in my head anymore. Because of this I was able to pay attention to the seeds of happiness contentedness, cheerfulness and especially mindfulness. The turquoise blue waters of the shoreline became extremely impressive. I noticed a bird calmly riding the updraft of a wave. Even the seaweed was an emerald green and amazing. It was as if I was hallucinating but in a good way. I appreciated everything so much more. I came home in a wonderful mood and was just buzzing over life.

The above may sound like tree hugging hippie talk as well as overt pacifism. But before you write the philosophy of Zen and the Abidharma off:

I DARE YOU TO ASK YOUR SELF IF YOU ARE REALLY IN CONTROL OF YOURSELF?

MORE IMPORTANTLY, I DARE YOU TO HAVE THE ABILITY TO CHANGE YOUR MIND. YOU WERE BORN WITH TOOLS TO MAKE EVERY SURF SESSION AND LIFE MAGICAL.

An Occasional letter from a Surfer on Philosophy- by Len Barrow

An Occasional letter from a Surfer on Philosophy
By Len Barrow

Surfing has been a gift to me. Since I was a child I have been engaged in one type of ocean activity or another and I could not possibly conceive of a life away from the ocean. I sometimes ask myself why I am so enthralled by the ocean. The answer came to me quite suddenly one day. I found that I loved the Ocean and its surf because it has been my teacher since a very young age.

The ocean will sometimes give the surfer a sudden lesson. Sometimes you get cocky in the surf (and in life) and the Ocean laughs at you and destroys your ego with a fifteen foot wave. Sometimes the Ocean gives you a lesson in more subtle ways.

This little story is an incident of the “subtle” variety. This happened a number of years back, and has since had a huge impact on my world view. The lesson is as follows.

I was sitting and watching the waves at Daimond Head and was thinking about where the waves had been “born.” These waves had their birth thousands of miles away in the Tasman sea, west of New Zealand. As the wave came across the ocean and grew, it linked up with other waves in what Oceanographers call wave chains. As the wave approached the shallow shores of Hawaii, it reached the peak of its life. I watched as this wave A-framed and peeled off in both directions. The wave then moved on in its life to white water and then disappeared as in death or had it?

Where did the wave “die” and go “to” I thought to myself. I was struck by the obvious conclusion that the wave that seemed like such a distinctive form, seemingly on its own power, did not actually disappear. What then did it become I asked myself? The answer came to me in a flash as in a little Zen Satori (moment of understanding) of sorts. The wave became the ocean, as it always was, waiting to be reformed into another “form” or wave when causes and conditions were just right; a literal and logical form of reincarnation .

A thought rushed into my mind. Was “I “ in any way like this? When did “I “ begin and for that matter when do I end? Maybe I am like the wave and the universe is like the ocean. Like the wave, do I have an inception when the causes and conditions are right and the egg and sperm meet? Maybe we could even go further back than this. Do I begin at the point my mother or father eat (maybe cow meat) to form the proteins that form the egg and sperm? Or do we go back to the suns energy that allowed the grass to grow to feed the cow? This is not strange reasoning. The aforementioned are all literal causes and conditions that are needed for me to be here. Actually, we can go on in this manner infinitely. It is like the question, where does a whirlpool begin (or end); one cannot tell.

In continuing this argument, as a baby I grow to being a boy , to a teenager then to a strapping young man peaking just as the A frame wave that I discussed before at Daimond Head. I will invariably grow old just as a wave crumbles into white water and “die.”

Or do I……Is this really the logical case?

Let us shift our thinking a bit and look at an equation that Einstein created that relates to our discussion. The equation is his famous E=MC². In laymen terms this equation simply informs us that matter is neither created nor destroyed. As waves go through a wonderful play of life and death they constantly take knew forms. The wave cannot become nothing at its “death” because the wave is simultaneously the ocean. A human is logically of the same situation. It is impossible for you to become nothing (at death) because you have been and will be nature as the wave is, has been and will be the ocean. You are simultaneously “You” and “Nature” at the same time. As the ocean inevitably will bring back the wave, you inevitably will reform in one way or another in nature. It is a logically inescapable conclusion. “You” (or whatever we are) will keep reforming in the same way as the wave, as the wave will be brought forth by the ocean repeatedly you will be brought forward by nature repeatedly.

We are necessarily infinite beings with the qualities of our mother; mother nature. We are all of this noble nature.

Let us leave this article with a Zen Koan (riddle). Please contemplate this.

WHAT WAS YOUR ORIGINAL FACE BEFORE YOU WERE BORN?

Good luck. This is a real mind bender, but keep working on it, especially when you are surfing.

Aloha,

Len Barrow - Hawaii, September 18, 2009.