Sacred Hoops covers Phil Jackson’s upbringing and career through 1994. Demonstrating how he applied zen principles to his coaching methods.
- True joy comes from being fully present in each and every moment, not just when things are going your way.
- If we can accept whatever hand we’ve been dealt— no matter how unwelcome— the way to proceed eventually becomes clear. If we rage and resist, our angry, fearful minds have trouble quieting down sufficiently to allow us to act in the most beneficial way for ourselves and others.
- Lesson one: don’t let anger cloud the mind.
- Lesson two: awareness is everything
- Lesson three: The power of We is stronger than the power of Me.
- “The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.” -Paul Avery
- Impermanence is a fundamental fact of life.
- “Do you see this goblet? For me, this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflect in the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on a shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it fall to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of Course.’ When I understand that this glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.” -Mark Epstein
- You have to trust your inner knowing. If you have a clear mind and an open heart you won’t have to search for direction. Direction will come to you.
- “Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, is fashioned by mind. If you speak and act with a polluted mind, suffering will follow you, as the wheel of an ox cart follow the footsteps of the ox… If you speak an act with a pure mind, happiness will follow you.” -Buddha
- What pollutes the mind is our desire to get life to conform to our peculiar notion of how things should be, as opposed to how they really are.
- The thoughts themselves are not the problem; it’s our desperate clinging to them and our resistance to what actually happening that causes us so much anguish.
- In Zen it is said that the gap between accepting things the way they are and wishing them to be otherwise is “the 10th of an inch of a difference between heaven and hell.”
- “One: Out of clutter, find simplicity. Two: From discord, find harmony. Three: In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” -Albert Einstein
- “By being kind to others— If it’s done properly, with proper understanding—we benefit as well. So the first point is that we are completely interrelated. What you do to others, you do to yourself. What you do to yourself, you do to others.” -Pema Chodron
- “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the that matters, in the end.” -Ursula K. LeGuin
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Bullet Point Reading 