The Empty Table
Here's the prologue to a book I'm working on. It's shortened to meet length requirements, and there are formatting problems,but you get the idea.
The Empty Table
“Cody arrived on the scene bearing his original and sepulchral mind… a permanent and musing figure before the green velvet of table number one where the intricate and almost metaphysical click and play of the billiard balls became …the unutterable realization of the great interior joyful knowledge of the world… ” (Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody)
It’s an interesting proposition—billiards as a method of contemplative absorption leading to universal awareness. Kerouac’s Cody seems to be mostly a spectator, engaged in what the medieval mystics called via contempliva or via passiva—not that meditation can ever be entirely passive. But surely the via activa is what a game like billiards is all about, the way of the player, the way of the Zen archer, the calligrapher, the martial artist. The Zen arts have been cultivated for centuries as spiritual practice. For many Americans and Europeans appreciation of these arts began with Eugen Herrigel’s account of his experience in his now classic Zen in the Art of Archery and has spilled over into sports psychology in books such as Timothy Galwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis and The Inner Game of Golf and Michael Murphy’s Golf in the Kingdom and In the Zone, the latter of which contains numerous testimonials to the potential sports provide for integrative experience, becoming one with an activity, the merging of doer and done. Phil Jackson has adapted some principles of Zen philosophy in coaching basketball, with notable success. But has anyone ever proposed that golf, tennis, or basketball be pursued as a serious, systematic meditation practice. What would that be like? What would it be like if billiards were a Zen art?
What we would need first is a dojo, a training hall, rather than a pool hall. Perhaps it has already appeared. One table in a room large enough to provide ten feet of carpeted space all around it and a little more at the far end, the room itself softly lit, the surface of the table evenly and intensely illuminated. On the floor at the deeper end of the room is a temple bell, bowl-shaped, struck to signal the beginning and end of each training session. Above the bell hangs a scroll with the Chinese characters for “Try, try, try for 10,000 years.” A small wooden table and two chairs are along one side wall, next to a rack for storing cue sticks and balls. Bow to the table when you enter. It is the universe in its purity—finite, classical, elegant, empty.
My first glimpse of a room such as this was a small billiards parlor in Seoul, a few blocks away from Hwa Gye Sah, a Buddhist temple in which I spent some time in 1993. Sleepless and restless from jet lag my first night in Korea, I wandered the streets and into the room, more out of curiosity than a desire to play. The room contained only two tables, both empty, and a scroll hanging on one of the walls. It was the proprietor, a small ageless man with a sweet smile, who bowed, offering me as he did so a set of three billiard balls he had been polishing when I entered. By way of gesture he invited me to play a game of three-cushion billiards with him, and it was soon apparent he was no ordinary player. In three-cushion billiards the cue ball typically strikes one of the two other balls, then contacts three or more rails, and then the third ball to score. Before each shot he would half close his eyes and trace out the long, projected course of the cueball in the air with a finger, the way a calligrapher sometimes will trace out the strokes of Chinese characters before picking up his brush. I thought at first this was for my edification and that he was showing me in advance how the shot would go, but after a while I thought that it might be a regular part of his shot routine, a way of getting the shot into his body and mind before he even bent over the table. Whatever his purpose was, I liked watching his finger move through the air, and I liked his actual play even more, the way he moved into a shot, his footwork, his fluid, precise stroke taken without any warm-up strokes, the effortless control of the cue ball, the quiet attention he gave to chalking the tip of his cue. We played for about an hour, and he seemed to enjoy watching me play as much he enjoyed playing himself, although my performance was nothing special at all and I missed far more shots than I made. Occasionally he would trace out a shot for me when I was stymied by the position of the balls. Outside, the stars were wheeling on, and before too long it would be time for early morning practice at the temple. We bowed to each other as I took my leave.
The following afternoon I returned to the billiards room with an interpreter, a Korean-American monk named Un Wol from the monastery where I was staying. I had told him about my experience the night before, and he said that he had heard about a billiards player who had once been a Buddhist monk and had gained some renown both as a player and teacher of the game. He was curious and wanted to meet the old man I had played, and I wanted to see him again myself and ask him some questions about his approach to the game and how I might improve my own. We walked down the hill from the temple and entered the room. Un Wol introduced himself to the proprietor and asked, after the two had exchanged what I took to be some pleasantries, if he would entertain a few questions from me. The old man smiled, nodded, and motioned for us to sit down. There were two players at one of the tables engaged in a game of four-ball billiards, the most common form the game in Korea, and the quiet roll and click of the balls drifted through the room. I asked my first question and Un Wol interpreted:
“You saw me play last night. I was tired, but still, I missed many shots I shouldn’t miss. Why do I miss shots that are well within my ability to make?” The old man looked at me as he spoke and continued to hold my eye while the monk translated:
“You miss because your mind moves.”
“What do you mean, my mind moves?”
“You do not hold the shot steadily in your mind. Sometimes doubt creeps in. Do I have the right line, is this the right speed, am I putting enough spin on the ball? That is your mind moving. All these questions must be settled completely before you take the stick back, even before you approach the table. Also, sometimes you think, Oh if I make this shot I will look really good, or, If I miss this shot I will look really bad. That also is your mind moving.”
“How can I stop my mind from moving?”
“First your body must be still. If your body is still then your mind can be still. You must be like a mountain when you shoot, never moving. Place your feet very carefully, like a great hawk settling on a branch. Then place your hand very carefully on the table behind the cue ball, and grip the cloth with the pads of your fingers. Keep your head completely still. Your eyes take in the whole shot, the paths of both balls and where the tip hits the cue ball. Only your forearm moves, from the elbow down, a short distance back, a short distance forward.”
“I noticed last night that you don’t take any warm-up strokes.” The interpreter couldn’t translate “warm-up strokes,” and I had to demonstrate. The old man used the English phrase in his response:
“Warm-up strokes? They are not necessary, not good, not bad. Only hold the tip of the cue stick steadily on the exact spot of the cue ball that you must hit. Then bring the stick back, pause, and bring it forward. When it has gone through the cue ball, hold it still again. Three points of stillness. One shot.”
“You talked before about holding the shot steadily in my mind. How can I practice that?”
“The best way to practice that is to close your eyes when you shoot.”
“Close my eyes?”
“Of course. Come to the table.” He handed me a cue stick, set up a shot, the opening shot in the game of three-cushion billiards, and invited me to shoot it. The red ball was on the foot spot at the far end of the table, the yellow ball was on the head spot, and the white cue ball was seven inches to the right of the yellow ball. It was a shot I had played hundreds of times and made less than half the time, a perfect example of a familiar shot well within my ability to make but one that in fact I missed more often than I made. I got down for the shot and placed my cue tip at about two o’clock on the cue ball to give it the spin that would bring it around the table after it hit the red ball and hopefully into the yellow ball to score. As I addressed the cue ball, he said to me.
“You already see the shot, and the tip of cue stick is where it should be on the cue ball. Now close your eyes, and as you shoot keep your mind and body completely still. And listen.”
Eyes closed, I took the stick back, paused, and brought it forward. When I felt and heard the leather tip contact the cue ball, I became aware that the entire shot is determined by that momentary touch, but still I followed through and held the stick on line until I heard the cueball contact the red ball. Standing up, I kept my eyes closed and listened. I could hear the cueball rolling, hear it bounce off the first and second cushions in the far left corner. The sound off the third rail was fainter, but I could still hear it and hear the roll of the cue ball over the cloth-covered, heavy slate on its way toward the yellow ball. I opened my eyes. The old man was smiling at me. He nodded his head as the cue ball kissed the white ball, scoring the point.
I realized—how could I have not?—that I had just had a lesson from a master and I wanted it to continue, or at least to thank him, but the old man had already turned his attention to the two players at the other table. Un Wol signaled to me that we should leave, and we walked out into the late afternoon light.
I never saw the old man again. The remainder of my stay in Seoul was highly structured—I was there to participate in a Zen retreat and several ceremonies—and there was no time left for a return visit, nor have I returned to Korea since then. Un Wol told me as we walked back to the temple that this was indeed the former monk turned billiards master of whom he had heard. His name was Mu Dang, and he had put aside his monk’s robes about five years ago and let his hair grow. As a young man, before he entered the monastery and took precepts, he had been an accomplished billiards player and had won several championships. He had also practiced a Taoist form of meditation that he had begun to integrate into his billiards game. At some point in his training he undertook a long solo meditation retreat in the mountains, and when he emerged from this retreat he abruptly decided to become a Buddhist monk in the Korean Chogye order. After thirty years as a monk, during which time he never picked up a cue stick, he left the order just as abruptly as he had entered it and began to play billiards again. He had only recently taken up residence in the small room in Seoul and begun to teach there. It was a fascinating story, and one that I wanted to follow up, but the usual business of life soon crowded it out of my mind, nor was billiards at that time important enough to me to make the effort that would have been required to learn more about the old master.
Three years later I received a letter from Un Wol asking me if I would be interested in a document he had come in possession of, a transcript of a series of talks Mu Dang had given at a very unusual retreat he had conducted. Un Wol described the retreat as a Zen billiards retreat, a six day session following the same schedule as a regular meditation retreat but with a structured series of exercises at the billiards table taking the place of the seated meditation that occupy eight hours of each regular Zen retreat day. Mu Dang had given a talk each of the six days, and had answered questions from participants at the end of each talk. These talks and question-answer sessions had been recorded and transcribed, and Un Wol was willing to make a rough and ready translation of these transcripts into English if I were interested....
© 2008 Stanley Lombardo
