Mindfulness Done Properly

In its purest forms, mindfulness is not about the self.

In fact, it actively eschews the self.

Remember: mindfulness arises from collectivist societies, where there was no ‘me’, only a ‘we’.

It is only when mindfulness practices started to come into contact with the western world that they became heavily individualized.

This individual version is often called modern mindfulness, as if to imply that it’s a progression because western scientists proved benefits that our ancestors already knew about. If anything, by individualizing mindfulness it is somewhat of a regression.

The coach who understood this best was the one who is credited with popularizing mindfulness in professional sports — Phil Jackson.

Littered throughout his books Sacred Hoops and Eleven Rings are references to his relentless pursuit of team basketball. He was pursuing mindfulness in its purest form, whereby individuals move beyond a state of understanding and accepting themselves, and into a state of connection to everything that exists.

Mindfulness in its purest form is not an individual pursuit, it is about serving others.

Surrender “Me” For “We”

Jackson wasn’t the head coach who installed the Triangle Offence in Chicago (that was Doug Collins, whom he replaced) but he was the one who understood its true capability. He writes, “what appealed to me about the system was that it empowered everybody on the team by making them more involved in the offense, and demanded that they put their individual needs second to those of the group.”

Even in the late 1980s, Jackson was bemoaning the slew of young stars who came into the NBA with eye-catching moves, but little sense of what it meant to play in a team. “The system helps undo some of this conditioning by getting players to play basketball with a capital B instead of indulging their self-interest,” Jackson says.

By practicing principles that show each player how they’re doing with respect to the team mission — as opposed to how they’re doing individually — the system begins to be truly mindful. Jackson explains the payoff this way: “They develop an intuitive feel for how their movements and those of everyone else on the floor are interconnected.”

And there it is. Pure mindfulness is beyond the self.

The Mindful Leader

Jackson’s success as a coach is often told through the lens of his biggest stars and their adoption of his ideas. Undoubtedly, having the uptake of your top players is a crucial part of any successful team, but it is only a sliver of the true story.

One of Jackson’s most savvy moves was to make Bill Cartwright co-captain of the Bulls, alongside Michael Jordan.

Here’s how Jackson describes Cartwright:

• “I sensed that Bill would be a better leader in the locker room, helping players cope with frustration and disappointment. He was a master at listening without judgment.”

• “Bill was adept at deflecting anger by giving teammates a chance to air their complaints.”

• “Other players could take chances going for steals and blocking shots because they could count on Bill to cover for them and keep them from being embarrassed.”

• “Bill’s soft whispery voice and salt-and-pepper goatee gave him a quiet professorial demeanour. The players nicknamed him ‘Teach’. Bill knew exactly what I was trying to do, sometimes even better than I did, and could explain it to the younger players in a non-threatening way. He helped me turn them into dreamers, to expand their vision of what they could become.”

To this day, most people don’t know who Bill Cartwright is, but in my mind he is just as central to Phil Jackson’s success as Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.

Only when you understand truly mindful teamwork are you perceptive enough to recognize that Bill Cartwright’s playing style is central to the anticipation and coordination of the group as a whole. This is as vital as the player who scores all the points.

Pure mindfulness is beyond the self.

Interconnectedness

Jackson is often associated with Zen Buddhism (which arose from Asia), but his idea for mindful teamwork is actually derived from Indigenous American concepts.

Raised in North Dakota, Jackson was exposed to the Lakota Sioux, a tribe with distinct beliefs and a proud warrior heritage.

He writes: “The Lakota don’t perceive the self as a separate entity, isolated from the rest of the universe. To them, everything is sacred, even the enemy, because of their belief in the interconnectedness of all life.”

The Lakota’s concept of teamwork, he writes, is deeply rooted in this worldview. “A warrior didn’t try to stand out from his fellow band members; he strove to act bravely and honourably, to help the group in whatever way he could to accomplish its mission.”

An example of this in action is the learning process point guard B.J. Armstrong went through with the Bulls. A heavy scorer in college, Armstrong had difficult initiation into the NBA as he tried to understand what it meant to help the group in whatever way he could.

To fast-track their learning about each other, Jackson admits he often put his players out on the floor in unusual combinations and let them deal with difficult game situations without intervening.

Jackson says that Armstrong, in particular, found that learning process to be maddening. “B.J. had trouble adapting to the system at first because, like most young players, his personal agenda was clouding his mind,” Jackson writes. “Every time B.J. got the ball he wanted to show the world what he could do — to score, or make a spectacular assist. That kind of thinking was counterproductive because it took him out of the moment and diminished his awareness of what the team was doing as a whole. It also telegraphed to the defense what he was going to do.”

Armstrong was a warrior trying to stand out from his band members.

Pure mindfulness, though, is beyond the self.

One Breath, One Mind

Phil Jackson’s over-arching philosophy of teamwork is perhaps best described by a phrase he introduced when he joined the Los Angeles Lakers.

He describes it like this: “In Chicago, we’d used meditation primarily to increase awareness on the court. But with this team our goal was to bond the players together so that they would experience what we called One Breath, One Mind.”

Human beings are capable of pattern matching heart rates and brain waves, particularly when they have shared experiences. When paired with a clear vision, this ascent beyond the self and into pure mindfulness produces the type of shared consciousness we all hope our teams can play with.

That is mindfulness done properly.

Cody’s Notes

• More people are familiar with Eleven Rings, however, in my mind Sacred Hoops is Jackson’s best memoir.

• I marvel at what Phil Jackson was able to implement in the late 1980s and early 1990s. We’re thirty years down the track and many of these ideas are only just reaching mainstream application in pro sports.