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A Buddhist view of Wallenda
vinlyn
Colorado...for now Veteran
So, Nick Wallenda successfully crossed the Little Grand Canyon via high wire.
But I kept wondering what the Buddhist view of such behavior might be.
But I kept wondering what the Buddhist view of such behavior might be.
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At least that's what I gathered from Twitter. I had no idea what Skywire was until about 2 minutes ago.
But my question is how a Buddhist should view the daredevil aspect of it.
I do not know what the Buddhist view of the behavior is however there are Buddhist psychological techniques/aspects, for lack of a better word, that would be useful in accomplishing such a feat.
Concepts such as one pointed focus awareness or concentration, mindfulness of being aware of all the complex variables that are constantly shifting, the ability to be non-attached to the outcome, to be aware of only the presence of now, the disappearance of the distinction between the person walking the rope in the rope, but there is no distinction between good or bad…or one would not want to use the judgment of good or bad, and etc. There is also the preparation of the body, of the emotions and of the mind. For example, when I snowboard I use a lot of techniques that I learned from meditation in my studies of Buddhism. When I’m blasting down the hill at 50 mph or dropping a big/steep line everything disappears and there’s only the moment. For me there’s a lot of similarities between snowboarding and Buddhism.
There is no pope in Buddhism. No central committee.
The "daredevil aspect" is our own construction, we have no idea what the experience was like on his side. Better to examine the assumptions on our side, because those we did experience in such and such a way.
As far as the question goes, I think sometimes we take things too far in asking "what would a Buddhist do?" Unless you are sitting on the fence of "should I walk the highwire in the Grand Canyon, or not??" I don't think it really matters what a Buddhist perspective is. It all depends on the reasons in doing so. I think it could be an attachment, or it could not be. Anyhow, I just think it's too easy to start looking at the world in a way that makes it more complicated than it needs to be. Observing something happening doesn't always mean having to question what Buddhist perspective is, I don't think anyhow.
His small children were watching. Had he fallen, they would have watched their father fall to his certain death, they would have become fatherless, the wife would have become a widow, and the family would have been deprived of the father's income.
As far as the responses about why should there be a Buddhist view of the issue...well, the same could be said about a huge percentage of our threads here.
As for the "what would Buddhists do" Yes, of course many threads are similar. I suppose it just depends where our thoughts and practice happen to be as far as what catches our eye at any given moment. I never gave it a second thought because other than the fact that it is on tv, it did not seem any riskier than any other # of things, from a suffering potentiality point of view. I wasn't trying to make light of your question, I was just thinking aloud from my perspective because sometimes I find myself thinking too seriously, or over-analyzing things too far when I don't need to. You know how when you buy a new car, you suddenly see the same type of car all over the road? I get the same impression sometimes about Buddhism (or any other topic) where when we're entrenched in it it's hard not to analyze every single thing from that point of view. I don't know what I'm really trying to say, lol, other than sometimes for me, I think it's ok just to let something be without feeling the need to analyze it from a Buddhist perspective. But I'm sure there are plenty of things I analyze that others would not as well, I didn't mean to imply that doing so was wrong.
Then again, I don't want to be too uptight about something like this because I suppose it has a place in modern society, just like motorcycle stunts or car racing. And this kind of daredevil display can be very inspiring to others. I think it shows the potential of human beings to perform physical feats like this.