For me, surfing represents a lifelong spiritual progression. It’s a kind of solipsistic spirituality, the joyful pursuit of this pleasure.
I think there are people who pooh-pooh the idea that a sport like surfing can have so much meaning, but I have a hard time calling surfing a sport, or paddling, or sailing. For me, ball games are sports, and surfing isn’t about scores. It could be a way of life, it could be a rite of passage. We don’t yet have a word for the spectrum of what surfing encompasses, but it could be called a practice. It is a practice of physical exercise, but also an exercise in stillness and selfishness.
Surfing is a solo sport. For example, a single rider occupies the space from which his experience cannot be synthesized elsewhere. He or she is tuned out from every other aspect of the world and tuned in to one captivating moment.This may be a universal constant, but it’s easier to understand from the realm of surfing. Experience is subjective to individual perspective.
Can spirituality only come from the spirit, and if so, how does one access it? Can our senses inspire the spirit? Is a special tea or mushroom able to induce spirituality in us? What about the ocean?
I wonder where the bridge is between spirituality and the world we swim in every day. People meditate on the breath. If swimming were as easy as breathing, people would then meditate on swimming. Surfing isn’t easy. Surfing is so engaging, so invoking, so completely dominating our awareness and attention that it becomes almost entirely unconscious. And so, we come back around and find ourselves solo, totally focused and completely present. Whether it comes through years of meditation, or a moment on the water, it’s there as long as there is the feeling of being in the moment, exactly in the right place, at exactly the right time.
Surfing is a meditation on the moment the same way that living is a meditation on life. Both unequal infinities are to be witnessed in awe before they are gone. It is from this sole point that surfing can be shared. We can share in the experience of other riders through witnessing them. We pick up on the sensory cues of joy and the thrill of steep sections, beautiful shape, bright wide eyes and smiles. Speed! How good does it feel to see your friend catch a bomb from the channel? To whoop and hoot for them as they navigate a drop you know is so steep that they might not make it?
To experience their thrill vicariously is to feel for them! Watching these moments and sharing them with another person as a witness is an exercise in empathy. How amazing that from this selfish exercise of surfing we empathize!
This is absolutely crucial to the spirituality of surfing, something many other spiritual paths have difficulty in communicating: Through self-love one learns empathy. No set of social “shoulds” can synthesize what this beautiful practice manifests naturally. If you pursue your own joy, as far and as honestly as possible, you will come to know it well. Knowing it well, you will learn to recognize it in others.
All mammals are wired for empathy, but crowds and traffic jams (as well as our wills and anxieties) seem to desensitize us from it. Just as we can empathize with the joy of other surfers, we can empathize with their frustration as well. We have all been there. We’ve been there at a break where we’re afraid to surf, where we aren’t getting any waves, where maybe there’s intimidation and inferiority in play. That experience is common. Getting “called in” to a wave from another surfer is an act of compassion. Also sharing and commiserating on the conditions are small acts that can change the mindset of frustrated surfers.
The act of surfing may be self-serving in origin, but just as we cannot turn off our empathy, so our joy also has a vested interest in the joy of others. And if we attempt to turn away from others, we lose ourselves in the process. If we lose ourselves, we fail to remain in touch with our own joy. Thus we become aggressive, competitive, and altogether frustrated.
In Sanskrit, Nirvana means to “blow out”, to let go, to relinquish all that is wrapped up in the tightness of anxious breathing. Have you ever ridden a wave so intense you forgot to breathe? Have you watched someone surfing who literally takes your breath away? When the ride is over and you realize you'd been holding your breath, with sudden clarity you let go. In letting go, you watch as the world comes fully into focus again.
