When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself. — Shunryu Suzuki
Just as a solid rock is not shaken by the storm, even so the wise are not affected by praise or blame. — The Buddha (Dhammapada)
My husband, Sukhema, grew up in the Santa Clara Valley, just south of San Francisco. As a boy, he was surrounded by orchards, vineyards, mountains, and rivers. Santa Clara was the most fertile valley in California until the land was tarmacked over by tech giants, and it is now known worldwide as Silicon Valley. Sukhema spent many blissful holidays on his grandparents’ farm in Lake Country, north of San Francisco. One of the things his grandfather taught him, besides fishing, horse-riding, and shooting, was how to play cribbage. After his grandfather’s wife died, he fell into a deep depression and stopped talking. But he continued playing cribbage with his grandson and the only words he still used were those related to the game, such as: “15-2 and the rest won’t do, 15-4 and the rest won’t score.” For those who don’t know, cribbage is a card game involving repeated rounds of dealing, presenting the cards, and counting. Pegs on a board mark the progress of the players and a distinctive feature is the crib: two cards each, placed face down for a second round of scoring points: “15-2 and three sevens for eight.”
Sukhema introduced me to the game many years ago and it has become part of the ritual fabric that patterns our shared life. It takes about 20–25 minutes to play, ideal for a post-dinner digestive period before moving on to some other evening activity, often a Zoom call. It’s an easy and comforting way to spend time with each other, including some light banter and sharing of the day’s events. I like the soothing effect of the repeating rhythms, sounds and textures—the swish and gentle thud of dealing the cards, the feel of the ridges of the fanned cards in my left hand. It’s not a particularly demanding game, but it still offers our aging brains somewhat of a senility-defying workout, I like to think, and there is satisfaction in gradual improvement. During COVID, I learned that shuffling method where you split the deck and let the cards zip together in a smooth, purring way—it’s called the riffle shuffle, a nice onomatopoetic word. Similar to other card games, strategic skill and the randomness of the dealt hand play about an even role in the chance of winning, and this is of course a win-lose game.
Every so often, I wonder if is it doing us any good exposing ourselves repeatedly to what Buddhists call “the eight worldly winds:” pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disrepute. Being swept away by these winds, so the teaching goes, by reacting to life’s inevitable ups and downs with attachment or aversion, leads to suffering. You see it clearly in action with children: they can become very upset when they lose at a game. They haven’t yet developed the neural pathways needed for emotional regulation and so take a loss highly personally—performance is conflated with self-worth and belief in their lovability. They lack a wider perspective and coping mechanisms to regard their loss in the context of skill development, luck, and enjoyable social engagement. But the presence of a warm, supportive adult can make all the difference. Their unconditional acceptance of the child, their modeling of emotional regulation, and assistance in processing the distress—“Yes, you are disappointed, and you are getting better all the time, aren’t you? Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, and we can still have fun”—allows the child to benefit from playing in this rule-bound way, alongside more free play, which has different positive effects.
Maybe for us adults, the imaginative presence of the Buddha as an “ideal adult” who models equanimity can function in a similar way, because clearly there is still a way to go on the path toward non-reactivity. When the cards fall my way repeatedly and I have a winning streak, I notice a difference in my posture, mood, and thinking patterns. I know that it’s due to hormones such as dopamine, testosterone, and endorphins; that sense of glow, confidence, and sharpened focus. Nothing wrong with enjoying it, although my pleasure comes at the cost of Sukhema’s resilience being challenged at the same time, and to some extent his struggles are mine. A while ago I won 11 times in a row, and he said in mocking despair: “I should have listened to my granddad when he said I should never teach the game to a woman.” And soon enough, the cards turn and I experience the effects of a different hormone cocktail: cortisol, adrenalin, and decreased serotonin, leading to a sense of energy deflation, tension in shoulders and neck, at times an increased heart rate, and a slightly more depressed mood. “15-2 and the rest won’t do.”
Would a buddha not experience any of those fluctuations, whether during a game of cribbage or in other life situations? What I notice is that after a period of intensified practice on retreat, I bring more inner spaciousness and more reliable composure to the game. It is useful to have such a touchstone. There is a pleasure in noticing the subtle changes in the internal landscape and in the field between us, more lightheartedness and warmth. The disappointment Sukhema might express when it turns out he made a wrong choice elicits a swell of compassion in me and winning genuinely matters less. “Nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nobody winning, nobody losing,” one of us may suggest with a wry smile.
On a recent retreat, my teacher Vessantara talked about the way we tend to identify with thinking, and compared it to the way online algorithms work. The more you repeat certain types of thinking, the more of the same or similar your brain will offer you. In this way we create our own reality, a story of a separate “me”—a person who deserves to win or lose, for example. It is wise to see the nature of those thoughts in the same way as other appearances in our field of experience. Like sounds, they come, are cared for in loving awareness, and they go. I may notice the hollow stomach feeling of disappointment arise, observe it with curiosity and care, and observe as it naturally transforms. Vessantara also talked about dwelling in “the greater mandala of uselessness;” interacting with things as they are in themselves, seeing their inherent suchness and beauty, rather than referring everything, in a utilitarian manner, back to “me.”
This way of living easily includes something as useless as playing cribbage. Sure, there are moral, social, and intellectual benefits of playing cribbage, but more importantly, we can simply enjoy it for its own sake. It is a wonderful opportunity of enjoying qualities of awareness, such as openness, clarity, and compassion with a wholehearted application akin to wanting to win. Then, nothing can be lost, except a limited sense of self. And there will of course be many situations in life when such a stance will be of great benefit—when you are in a conflict situation with a friend for example. Surrendering the urge to win an argument will make it much more likely that a peaceful solution will be found.
Related features from BDG
Thích Nhất Hạnh’s Reinterpretation of Mindfulness
Living Playfully: Glimpses into a Buddhist Artist’s Training and Practice
Buddhistdoor View: Winning Mental Health
Games
Book Review: How to Let Things Go
