# 198: BOOK OF THE WEEK — “Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior”
Story behind the Book Choice
I have no idea how I became aware of this book and when exactly I bought it. But I know exactly, why I bought it. Sports, leadership, and spirituality — these are the things that move me and at least 50% of all my books in the shelf revolve around these issues. As to sports, I am usually into boxing and tennis a lot, at least, when it comes to reading. But today, I learned a lot about basketball coaching and I am really thankful for all the lessons that Jackson taught me in his writing.
Jackson was the head coach of the Chicago Bulls and the most successful NBA coach of all times. Much of this success is rooted in his spiritual approach to coaching, as the title reveals. Again, as always, I invite anybody who shies away from anything “spiritual” to simply not pay attention to this word and the related associations. The book is about how great coaches can form great teams, nothing else. This is the most relevant skill that is needed to get anything done — in society, on the court, in personal life. If you want to learn it or expand your existing skills, Jackson is a wonderful teacher.
My Learnings
1. Vision
Jackson does not take a one-sided approach to spirituality. He grew up in a highly religious and devoted Pentacostal family and then went on his own journey towards discovering different spiritual paths. Besides Zen Buddhism, he also often highlights the commonalities between Zen and Christianity and his experiences with Native American traditions in the book. As often happens, his book is a repository of other books about related topics and this is, by the way, how most of my books find their way to me: I will surely buy several of the titles that appear in his narrative. As he also shares in one passage, part of his coaching interventions also was giving books to the players to read on trips. I whish, other leaders outside the field of basketball would also start this practice.
The importance of vision is obviously at the core of all leadership theories. Many also use this as the dividing criterion to management, i.e., by claiming that the outstanding quality of a leader is the ability to “see the future” and to “envision” it to then also design it to turn it into reality. But what I like so much about this page on Jackson’s lesson about the meaning of vision for the Lakota Indians is that it is itself so “visual.” By using the eagle as the most sacred animal and image of leadership, one can immediately see why vision is key to leading.
For me, personally, vision has become even more crucial the more you relate it to spiritual teachings. And I mean this in quite a literal way because there really is nothing else but vision involved in order to experience the outside world in a particular moment. You see the things around you and nothing but this. This is important. There is a difference between the eagle’s vision in the here and now and the kind of fantasizing about the future that some people perceive of as vision. According to the spirituality that Jackson drafts thoughout the book, you learn that both coexist — the seeing in the present moment without having your thoughts rush to the future and the painting of the picture that Jackson is talking about here.
2. Beginner’s Mind
The beginner’s mind is at the core of Buddhism and if you really get its meaning, it is indivisible from being in the moment. You can only leave behind everything you do and know cognitively, if you ARE in the present. That does not mean that you forget about everything you know but you do not allow all this baggage to interfere with your thoughts in the present moment. In fact, you do not have any thoughts anymore if you practice continuously. You listen and you watch. And this means with everything you have. It is quite interesting to read that Jackson also mentions body language as an important element of awareness because there is so much that we cannot see with our eyes — we can only see it with our heart, we can sense it.
Related with the beginner’s mind is, obviously, the fact that every solution is unique, individual, momentarily. This is something that I dearly hope the education system is going to teach people again. If we leave behind the “expert” status that is being celebrated so much, the universe of solutions opens up. These solutions can only unfold if we meet the needs of the different actors. When talking about leadership, this does not exclude the needs of the “silent leader.” On the contrary, a mindful leader who is fully present feels his/her own needs arising as well. An enlightened leader will not identify with these needs but nevertheless hear a voice arise that will tell him/her what to ask or say — or not to say.
One thing that is really crucial in this sense is the “silence” Jackson mentions. It is not just the silence of the respective counterpart, it is also the silence of the leader. In our loud and rushing culture, leadership and power are usually associated with raising one’s voice. But for those practicing mindfulness, there is nothing more powerful than the silence inside. And this silence can move mountains. Again, however, there is no general recipe, no smart book or fancy method to consult to find out when to do what. It is only the beginner’s mind and the being in the moment that will indicate clearly if silence might be the smarter “word” to express.
3. Winning Culture
This page is so rich. Right now in Germany, we have all this talk about finally developing a “failure culture” (trial and error). This might be a good idea but it can also slip off into the extreme, as startups demonstrate with their “fuck-up nights” — i.e., they celebrate failure to an extent where failure is presented as the new cool and successful. But I do not want to talk about the extremes. What I want to talk about is culture. Yes, we always blame culture for the winning or failure burden resting upon us; the fact that winning seems to be the overarching theme of life. Even though we know that this is true, we also know that it is not true for life as a whole. We all know that we will not triumph in the end, we cannot win over death.
For Buddhists and some other religions, death is not a loss or failure, of course, but a new beginning in certain ways. But let us look at it from a more secular perspective. We all know that we cannot take money or honor to the grave. And most people also know that all these things do not bring happiness apart from the short moment of actually experiencing winning a game and hearing the applause, for example. So, since these findings are human and thus universal, we all have the ability to know this. If this is so, why do we continue to blame “culture” for our constant winning dogma. Above all, who or what is culture?
Yes, it is all of us!
I really hope that this pandemic will trigger some learnings. And a crucial learning is that there are so many things — all things — more important than winning. Even people who, like Jackson, who based their entire identity on winning at some point, learned this. For some, it is spirituality that awakens them. For others, it is pain, suffering, tragedy. There is a lot of pain around right now and there is a chance that we can use it productively. Yes, we can all blame culture. But yes, we can also all change it by standing up and ACTING. The only way that this can happen, I guess, is by giving up some harmful thoughts— by losing them, willingly or unwillingly. If people start the path of mindfulness, they can experience what it means to lose all the noisy thoughts, to make more room for life, and to lead with awareness in every moment.
“Buddhism teaches us that by accepting death, you discover life.”
Reflection Questions
1) How would you characterize your own leadership style?
2) In which fields of your life could a “beginner’s mind” help you become a more effective leader?
3) What do you think about the cultural pressure to make “winning” the ultimate goal in life in your country’s culture?