Enjoy golf, the mystic way

Rajbir Deswal

The game of golf seems to have been invented by our rishi-munis. Not only the regimen and commandments of the game, but also its playing field has a spiritual course, much like the ancient Indian mythological prescriptions. As in spirituality, sadhna even in golf is never complete, and it is an unending quest for perfection through meditation, perseverance, concentration, regularity and devotion, which some fussy minds call addiction.

Our sages prescribed the structuring of a golf course in a cosmic matrix of straight fairways, slight upheavals and manoeuvrable slopes. The choice of your hitting a rough or drowning is your own. With your acumen, you can make the soul of your ball go kissing the top surface of water and again join you on the fairway. The noble rishi-munis did not put any rocks here to hit, or fire to burn. The element of water is there, being an essential ingredient, besides air. There are only bunkers to trip over which are a good reminder of the risks involved and challenges taken in stride.

A stage comes when you are on the verdurous green of facility you cherished the most, with the only aim left to enter the realm of bliss through putting. Right line, right amount of push, watching with eyes fixed, focusing and aiming, measuring the other side of slope, attendant silence and a pendulum-like soft whack — is all that makes a difference to the quality of your life when you began with a tee and drive to the culmination to the attainment of bliss.

Well, it surely may be mind-gaming with ensuing abhyas (practice) to get anand (bliss). A shortcut? Yes, a mulligan. It is a sorcerer’s tool which allows you to go another time if you fail in the beginning. Not bad!

In the deal, you were given the option to go as high as you could or go as far, but exactly on the green side of your endeavour, and not from over it. Also in the way could be dough, hooks, yanks, draw and fades — but that is what the life design of golf is. Degrees and angles of clubs and irons are the only hymns one sings to achieve bliss or anand.

Like all spiritual indulgences should have a posture of yoga, the same way you have stance, swings and follow-throughs. Golfing is a divine obtainment where you have no opponent to compete with, but your own self, like you traverse the life’s course all by yourself, and when you gather up to your ancestors, it is again your lone journey. So enjoy golfing, the mystic way.