Advaita in the Cricket ground

My earliest spiritual experiences have been, not surprisingly, in the cricket field, for that was the only thing I did with devotion in the first twenty years of my life.

I would recall them like this: I am standing in the slip cordon. The focus is on the bowler as he runs up, the ball leaves his hand and I have no thoughts as my mind is fully focussed on the ball curving in the air or off the pitch, the ball takes a faint edge and flies towards me; at this moment it is as if there is perfect absence of mind or a separate self, as if I am just part of the scene - there is no me , no batsman , no bowler, no sense of time, no anything —just the pure consciousness of being part of the scene unfolding in a split second. It is awareness without any subject and object relationship -awareness being aware of itself without a separate ‘I’ to witness. It is concisousness expereincing itself.

The ball some how lodges in the hand - If the focus is on the effort , the ball would have somehow eluded the grasp and split on the ground-

and in a split of the second the state of bliss is broken.

Thereafter there is triumphalism and the ‘I’ returns and the bliss is broken — just an elation getting the batsman out and earning the praise of my team, which is nothing but an object of the mind - of the 'I'.

This experience as an adolescent in the cricket field, though it has happened time and again made me love cricket , I can say in retrospect. If I reflect on it, these moments of being without thoughts - that make up my ‘I’ - has given me more peace and happiness than the many experience of objects, problem solving, sensations of the body, relationships have given.

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