About Golfing Zen: This is the first in a continuing series of short essays dealing with the application of Eastern spiritual philosophy to your golf game. (The title says Zen, but this discussion will apply equally to the other Eastern disciplines: Buddhism, Taoism, etc.)
The superficial intent (or benefit) is that, as you apply these ideas, your golf and your enjoyment of the game will grow. However, the underlying motive is, as you are able to see gains on the course, youll be moved to alter your approach to life as well.
Todays Topic: West versus East
Before we can dig into the details, we need to start with an over-view of how Eastern and Western thought differs, in the most fundamental of ways.
We Westerners are trained from birth to use our logical, analytical, conscious mind our three pounds of meat. From our earliest age we learn to name, to sort out, to categorize. We may not grow up to be scientists, but we learn to think according to the scientific method, and we worship at the feet of the great thinkers: Einstein; Newton; Steven Hawkings. In a very fundamental way, we learn to distinguish to separate out ourselves, our people, our...