Practice, 2

When I entered 9th grade, I decided to try out for the school tennis team. I had never played tennis, so this was sort of foolish. But kids get to be foolish, right?

I asked the coach how to prepare for the try-outs. He handed me a couple of worn-out balls and a metal racket, and told me to hit the ball against the side of the gym. So every day after school I stood in front of the gym wall for several hours and played solo hit-and-return until I got pretty consistent.

I made the team, thanks to this steady effort.

Practice matters.

Research shows that it takes ten years of dedicated practice before a person develops facility in an endeavor. This is true for athletes, musicians, mathematicians and meditation practitioners.

I began Zen training when I was 43 years old. In the first decade, I poured myself into formal training. Over the last ten years, the intensity has eased although practice has continued apace.

So . . . have I developed "facility" as a result of this training?

How might we might measure this? Through the passing of important kong-ans? The development of certain life skills? What about having a "special" experience?

Do these kinds of criteria miss the point? After all, the work of coming alive as a human being is not really a competition, subject to assessment and evaluation. Perhaps it's not even about attainment.

Perhaps twenty years of practice is only twenty years of practice. Could that be enough?

Or am I still being foolish?

Comments

[Joseph]

I've thought a bit about the word "practice" over the short time I've been "practicing".
With spiritual practice, I find the line between practicing and doing is very thin.
I'm practicing life, but is life on pause while I'm practicing?

I think the "facility" becomes apparent when we return from our pauses, probably even more apparently to those close to us than ourselves.

[Genju]

10,000 hours to become an expert. That's not a lot of time when you really think about it. That's about 6.67 years if I practice 7.5 hours a day x 5 days a week for 40 weeks.

OTOH, at 18 hours a day x 7 days a week x 52 weeks, it will take me 1.5 years...

But then I'm an expert and the possibilities narrow and I make more mistakes (according to Suzuki roshi and other research).

I can't win for losing, Barry!

[jeff sears]

Perhaps we practice to realize (over and over again) that we've always been an expert.

[Barry Briggs]

Better not to be an expert . . . is that what you're saying, Genju? If so, then I'm in good shape!

Jeff, perhaps we practice to realize (over and over) that we've never been an expert. There's something genuine in that, perhaps.