Role of Spirituality in Sports - Term Paper Example

Role of Spirituality in Sports Role of Spirituality in Sports Introduction Sports are not only physical in nature, it is even spiritual in nature and various aspects of sports are related to spirituality and spirituality plays a major role in sporting activities. Sports assists an individual in obtaining spiritual change, helps him/her understand community, and helps him/her realize the purpose of his/her own life. Meanings exist in different parts of different sports, the football being round in shape, the goal keeper protecting the goal post and various such activities in different kinds of sports have different spiritual meanings. Existence of spirituality within sporting activities can not be undermined. An individual’s spiritual endeavor contains of three different connections at three different levels. First comes the connection within the person himself, next comes the connection when individuals get into relationships with others and third is the connection when individual starts working towards a higher purpose. There is a huge difference between and individuals endeavor of spirituality and organized religion, but it can not be denied that an individual’s spiritual venture is vested in religious activities and knowledge that is provided by various religions. Religious books such as the Bible provides descriptions of issues in written format and helps individuals in making decisions that are correct for them. There is huge difference between how different religious writings are written but they all preach the same meanings and themes. All books and writings preach similar themes including: the ideology of a higher being, the ideology of an individual himself, of the right path, of information and acumen, happiness, relationship with others, importance of worshiping, destiny and free choice, equality and demise. This paper focuses on the role that spirituality plays in sports and how these themes exit in various sporting activities. Body According to various spiritual writings of different religions, there is only one God, these texture even state that God exists every where. Over the years, theologians have regarded things that are very close to us as Gods in order to provide a human like face to God. Believing that God exists every where and he is even available within our hearts can have a very positive effect on individuals. We may perceive that God is available in the amazingly beautiful Rainbow or it can be witnessed in difficult things such as an individual trying to regain his memory after loosing it. God can be recognized in every portion of an individual’s life, it can even exist in the powerful football kick that a football player makes to obtain a goal and yet fails due to the football hitting the poles of the goal instead of entering the goal itself. There are several times when while watching or playing sports individuals may experience performance that have never been seen before and skills exhibited that result in great benefit for the teams. At these times an individual realizes that if God is there then even the unimaginable things and events can occur. According to Christian Bible and Holy Quran, an individual can find God within himself and He exists in an individual (Woo, 2011, p.11). This premise can help individual’s understand the reason due to which individuals are able to experience unusual happenings. Keeping sports in mind, the notion of God exists within an individual can be characterized by the feeling of flow, feeling of flow is referred to the unionization of an individuals cognition and physical being and these two operate together and provide individuals with the experience that something great has happened to them. For example: during the games of Fifa 2012, Messi struck a direct goal from half of the ground and amazed every spectator and the commentators. This unbelievable moment is a sign of unification of the mind and the soul of the football player clearly reflecting that unbelievable moments are possible because of the existence of God within individuals. Spiritual path is the path that all individuals seek to attain a life in which he/she is able to achieve his/her aims and objectives and is able to understand his/her purpose of life. Texts that are religious in nature provides an individual with various codes of conduct and informs individual between right and wrong, by following these guidelines and individual can complete is spiritual journey which is called the spiritual path. In the spiritual text of Buddhism, it is stated that an individual can obtain satisfaction and happiness by following the middle path (Snyder, 2011, p.170). Sports can be recognized as an example of the middle path as the athletes in the sporting arena gain success by making steady moves, gaining progress that is relevant to his aims and objectives and he/she never gives up due to the obstacles he experiences and does not fall for the fallacy of training. Athletes choose one of the two ways of attaining success, either they resort to over training in which they spend hours and years in training and those athletes who select the other way, practice for hours and pay handful of attention to moves and adjust according to critiques. For example: Denver Nuggets an NBA super star rejects that training and practice is important and on the other end is Suzy Favor-Hamilton who is an Olympic runner and she is recognized for devoting hours of her life to practice and has ended up with injuries and decreased performance. In sports the middle way is the path where the athlete conducts both sides of the extreme ways, the athlete not only gives time to practice and training, he/she even gives time to relaxation and comfort. Scripture states that those who work hard and remember God are the ones who are helped by the God and they obtain success from their efforts. Similarly, Athletes need not only top practice, they even need to believe in God and God will ultimately help them in achieving their aims and objectives. In sporting activities knowledge and wisdom is of great importance and equal importance is laid on creativity, code of conducts and playing procedures act as the knowledge required by a player to play in a wisely manner and the trial and error procedure helps a player in playing in a creative manner. Similarly scripture provides information to individuals about what is right and wrong and with this knowledge, individuals act in a wise manner. The coaches of athletes are individuals who have already played a particular sport and have insight about the sport, the information and skills they have are transferred by them to the athletes and this helps athletes in looking at their game from different points of view. Similarly scripture states that individuals should not restrict themselves to predefined constructs and should define his/her game in his/her own way. A legendary soccer player named Pele scored over 1200 goals in his career of 20 years; he stated that he was brought to this world by God with the purpose of playing adding value to the game of soccer. During the Olympics of 1968 a player named Dick Fosbury who was participating in Track and field sport gained high amount of popularity and success due to his unique style of jumping. This shows that the player did not stick to what the sporting information states and instead created his own way of jumping and this creativity brought him success. This kind of creativity can not come into existence without the help of God, although knowledge provides players with information on how to play the game, but playing creatively is simply an act of God. Religions from all over the world, preach that an individual should pursue a good life and should preach the importance of behavior that is categorized as righteous. In Christianity the righteous behavior is stated within the Ten Commandments and Hindus obtain the information regarding the righteous behavior through Laws of Life (Pollock, 2012, p.32). All these religions preach that an individual can only live a good life if he works for the betterment of the entire society and not just himself. Society and the individuals within the society have deviated from righteous behavior and are accepting sin; sin is referred to an individual’s inability to follow the preached righteous behavior and an individual’s mistake of missing the purpose for which he was brought into this world. In football, the aim of a footballer is to score goals and obtain success for his/her team and if the footballer fails to score, this means that he has committed sin. Tolle stated that if an individual has to achieve a good life he has to give up his own interest for the interest of the society, similarly, a football player has to give priority to the interest of the team and give up his own personal interest (Tolle, 2006, p.9). Scripture state that those individuals who are proud of themselves and show off their power and ability are automatically humbled. This has been witnessed in sports, for example: Randy Moss started celebrating more than he should have after scoring a goal in the Super Bowl of 2008, the end result was that New York Giant’s Score at the end of the game was more and they stood victorious, thus this event gives an example that God does not like show off and those who conduct such activities are humbled. A true athlete is one who has great interpersonal as well as personal skills. One of the most problematic aspects of sports is transformation of an individual’s mind frame from thinking about himself to giving importance to the entire team and maximizing team’s interest. The shift of paradigm of interest within an individual is referred to as marked change by Tolle (Tolle, 2006, p.9). Those athletes who do not accept the importance and effectiveness of working as a team experience disastrous conditions that end up hurting themselves, community and fail to achieve good within sporting environment. Various sports starts in different sporting events and sports have conducted mal practices such as using drugs to enhance their game with the motive of achieving ones own aims and objectives, such players are disliked by the society. But society has again and again accepted their apologies as scripture such as Quran states that the best possible deed that an individual can perform is to forget after forgiving another’s sins. Scripture and spiritual texts teach individuals the importance of loving and caring and providing service, the arena of athletics even promotes this ideology. The most inspiring element of sports is the compassion of the player with his/her sports. Sporting activities and the field of sports does not represent the notion of one team competing another as competition and has provided an alternative view of it. Jackson states that the playing a sports is simple to fighting a war because in sports the player leaves his home or safe heaven of sitting area and enters in an open space while reflecting bravery and being gentle at the same time which similar to a warrior stepping out in the field of war, exhibiting bravery and acting like a gentle person. The conventional perception of sports was build upon exhibiting power and aggressive behavior and humiliating others, the current perception of sports and sporting individual is based on honor, respect and obtaining benefits. The respect and honor in sporting activities are mutual, this means that both the teams have to respect and honor each other. Religious scripture even focuses on providing mutual respect and honor, Islam teaches its followers that an individual should not only respect his/her religion, he/she should even respect the religion of others. Religion preaches its followers that they should be devoted towards their religion and should pursue religion in any circumstance; similarly, love for the game played by an individual is experienced in sports. There have been instances where religious followers have devoted their entire lives to their religion and worship, similarly sports persons have spent their lives for their game and have remained quite devoted towards their game. This devotion can only be seen in those sports person who really value religion and their game at the same time. As religion preaches their followers to be completely devoted to their religion, coaches such as Lombardi who was recognized as one of the best football coach as he helped Green Bay Packers in attaining five championships during his coaching period of nine years. Lombardi used to preach his players that they should cross the line, this means that they should work extra and put in more than they can actually do and practice every day. The devotion towards sports and relevant sporting activities assists a sports person to pay attention and become devoted towards his main purpose. Freke states that an individual should spend every minute of his life to honor the glory of God as this is the purpose every religious follower wants to attain (Freke, 1998, p.111). An individual’s life is complete of uncertain situations and events and this uncertainty is caused due to existence of will that is free and destiny. Success can not only be gained through excessive efforts and use of energy to attain something. Freke states that an individual life comprises of the communication and link between destiny and an individual’s free will to choose (Freke, 1998, p.120). Religion preaches that an individual has no control over happenings, he can only make efforts to ensure that something desirable happen. Religion further preaches that individuals should conduct actions in accordance with the objective of attaining good life and the happening or events that takes place in an individual’s life is in the hand of the supreme being. For example: a footballer may take every step and use every technique to finally reach near the goal post, but the final decision of whether the ball will cross the keeper and enter the goal is not in his hand. He may try to strike the goal but the ball can travel anywhere and alternative to desired results can be achieved. The occurrence of undesired and desired results is a reflection of fate and acknowledgement of the belief that an individual does not control the outcome, but God is in control of the outcome. The concept of karma even reflects the existence of fate; karma is referred to as the outcome of how individual operates. If an individual works hard to obtain goals and objectives, and if he successfully attains those objectives, it is stated that it is work of karma. This means that God gives importance to the actions and intentions of an individual and if the actions and intentions are just, the probability of an individual achieving his/her aims and objectives is quite high. Scripture preaches individuals that by gaining insight about death, individual’s change the way they actually live and start living life in an authentic manner (Seyal, 2009, p.31). Similarly, when footballer end up with an injury and do not get a chance to play and do not play for a long period of time, they get time to look back at their mistakes that led to them being separated from the game and this provides them insight about their mistakes and their game experiences a complete change. The fear and sorrow of death makes an individual participate in life in a much better way than those who do not fear death and believe that they are going to live for ever. When an individual starts believing that one day his life is going to end, with that thought he is persuaded to achieve all the pleasures of life, one who doesn’t fear death may think that he will live for ever and he have enough time to experience pleasure. Similarly, people come near to religion when they have the fear of death and the fear of being placed in hell. Conclusion Religion and spirituality plays an important role in every human’s life, religion and spirituality is experienced by individuals in every walk of life. If individuals start applying religion to their every day life, they will experience success as religions teach individuals about the right way of living their lives. Religion is even experienced in different sporting events, some have experienced that religion has a role to play in football. Religion teaches individuals about teams and groups and teaches individuals to sacrifice their own good for the greater good. Similarly in sports players are advised to be a team player instead of playing as an individual player. Religion preaches individuals to attain a good life, a life that consists of happiness. A sports person can attain a good life by playing for the greater good of the game and instead of being jealous and aggressive against competing teams; an individual should take part in sports man spirit. References Freke, T. (1998). The illustrated book of Sacred Scriptures. Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Pub. House. Pollock, J. M. (2012). Ethical dilemmas and decisions in criminal justice (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Seyal, R. (2009). Glorious quran in poetic stance: with scientific elucidations.. S.l.: Iuniverse Inc.. Snyder, J. L. (2011). Religion and international relations theory. New York: Columbia University Press. Tolle, E. (2006). A new earth: awakening to your lifes purpose. New York: Plume Woo, Richard. (2011). God or Allah, Truth or Bull?. Gardners Books. Read More