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The
Mother Answers on Perfection of the Body - III
Mother,
are sports competitions essential to our progress?
From
the point of view of moral education they are rather essential,
for if one can take part in them in the right spirit, it is
a very good opportunity for mastering one's ego. If one does
it without trying to overcome one's weaknesses and lower movements,
one obviously doesn't know how to profit by them, and it does
no good; but if one has the will to play in the right spirit,
without any movement of a lower kind, without jealousy or
ambition, keeping an attitude which could be called "fair
play", that is, doing one's best and not caring about
the result; if one can put in the utmost effort without being
upset because one has not met with success or things have
not turned out in one's favour, then it is very useful. One
can come out of all these competitions with a greater self-control
and a detachment from results which are a great help to the
formation of an exceptional character. Naturally, if you do
it in the ordinary way and with all the ordinary reactions
and ugly movements, it doesn't help anything at all; but that
holds good in no matter what one does; whether in the field
of sports or the intellectual field, anywhere, if one acts
in the ordinary way, well, one wastes one's time. But if when
playing or taking part in tournaments and competitions, you
keep the right spirit, it is a very good education, for it
compels you to make a special effort and to exceed your ordinary
limits a little. It is certainly an opportunity to make conscious
many of your movements which otherwise would always remain
unconscious.
But
naturally, you must not forget that this must be an opportunity
and a means for progress. If you just let yourselves go and
play in an altogether ordinary manner, you are wasting your
time; but it is the same for everything, not only for this:
for studies and for anything at all. Everything always
depends on the way in which things are done, not so much
on what one does but on the spirit in which one does it.
If
you were all yogis and did everything you do with your utmost
effort and to your utmost possibilities, as well as you can
do it and always with the idea of doing it better still, then,
obviously, there would be no need of competitions, prizes,
rewards; but, as Sri Aurobindo writes, little children cannot
be expected to be yogis, and during the period of preparation
a stimulus is necessary for the most material consciousness
to make an effort for progress... And this period of childhood
may last for many years!
The
ideal would be exactly what I have written in the last Bulletin,
I don't know if you have read it, but I have written something
like this:
Have
no ambition,
above all pretend nothing,
but be at every moment
the utmost that you can be.
That
is the ideal state in the integral life—whatever one
does. And if one realises that, well, one is certainly very
far on the path of perfection... But it is obvious that a
certain inner maturity is needed to do this in all sincerity.
You may set this as a programme for yourselves.
If
you like we shall take it as the subject of our meditation.
1
May 1957
- The Mother
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