The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield

• True intelligence does not reside in the brain, but in the hands.
• In the final analysis, aren't all our diseases mental?
• You could change the universe, or your own at any rate, by transmuting it mentally.
• When a man's foes are worthy, every match is at championship level.
• I believe that each of us possesses, inside ourselves, one true Authentic Swing that is ours alone. It is folly to try to teach us another, or mold us to some ideal version of the perfect swing. Each player possesses only that one swing that he was born with, that swing which existed within him before he ever picked up a club. Like the statue of David, our Authentic Swing already exists, concealed within the stone, so to speak.
• I believe this is the reason for the endless fascination of golf. The game is a metaphor for the soul's search for its true ground and identity.
• We enter onto this material plane, as Wordsworth said, 'not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home.' In other words, already possessing a highly refined and individuated soul. Our job here is to recall that soul and become it. To form a union with it, a yoga as they say in India.
• We cannot overcome by force of will.
• For in the end, grace comes from God, from the Authentic Self.
• The swing is never learned. It's remembered.
• What good ever came of human beings facing one another in conflict?
• What is ever gained by 'defeating' others?
• What statement can you make about what is real or important?
• So you choose not to act. As if by that choice, you will cause no harm.
• Life is action. Even choosing not to act, we act.
• There can be no cheating in the dimension in which the Self resides. There every action inexorably produces its result, every thought its consequence.
• The rain falls, with no though of watering the land. The clouds roll, not seeking to bring shade. They simply do. And we must too.
• Why did God give us a brain if not to think?
• Don't they, the animals, seem closer to God than we? Don't they seem automatically tuned to His will, guided flawlessly by instinct?
• The Knowing is everything. It is the Knowing alone that survives the death of the body. You are your Knowing.
• In sensed that every aspect of the gull's life, of the storm's life, of the planet's itself, was play. Hunting and killing included. It was all play. Only we humans broke this natural law.
• There's no tonic like youth for a quick recovery!
• The human being at his current level is incapable of perceiving Reality, except in rare ecstatic bursts. In earlier eras, men could hold that consciousness longer. In future ages, they will again.
• He had destroyed himself by his own arrogance. With his own hand he had crushed the Grace that had been granted him
• You are never alone.
• Those who seek lesser teachers go unto them.
• Play is the activity most pleasing to me. Because it is authentic.
• A day will come for you when play becomes torment.
• How can any of us know another's grief?

1/9/2007