“let their minds
down” have been “psyched out” by
their opponents. Mike Tyson tended to have his opponents
in just such states of mind, making them easier
to throttle. The fighters who did not let Tyson
psyche them out beat him and beat him soundly. Most
fighters who fought Tyson knew how to fight, had
practiced endless hours in the gym honing their
skills, only to walk into the ring and wham! lights
out! It’s not only in boxing or athletics that
we can let our minds down, but in all aspects of
life that require us to put ourselves on the line.
If you have to make an important speech about a
subject that you have full knowledge of, you can
find yourself at the podium ahing and uhming, stammering
and sweating, mumbling and fumbling, until your
audience is lost or completely tuned out. You have
no doubt heard the expression “his mind wasn’t
in it” and it’s equally important corollary
“his heart wasn’t in it.” If your
mind and heart aren’t in it, God help you!
I would hate to be under the knife with a surgeon
who was exhibiting an absent mind and an equally
absent heart. A slight dropping of the mind therefore
can make a seasoned boxer get knocked out, a veteran
stage actor or actress forget his or her lines and
stand frozen like a deer in the headlights, and
a knowledgeable lecturer become a blithering buffoon.
Ernest Hemingway, one of America’s greatest
writers, talked about “grace under pressure,”
or the ability to perform when the chips were down
and the spotlight was on you. This is precisely
what happens when the stickman passes you the dice
for your Come-Out roll and everyone all around the
table starts putting down their hard-earned money
on the Pass Line in the hopes that you’ll take
them to craps nirvana. You’ll note that some
players attempt to pretend that this doesn’t
have any effect on them by acting nonchalant and
just desultorily flinging the dice down the table
as if they don’t care at all what the outcome
of the roll will be. Others are so intense that
a seven-out is cause for cursing and wallowing in
guilt and recriminations (“if only the dealer
had passed the dice to me with the 3/5 on top!”)
that last through the rolls of subsequent shooters.
Neither of these two types of players can be a long-term
winner at craps, the first because he doesn’t
even want to win, the second because he wants to
win too badly. How strong are the powers of the
mind?
A recent research study
reported by Jamie Talan in Newsday discussed the
“biology of meditation” and its implications.
The findings were breathtaking to say the least.
Researchers discovered that individuals who had
undergone an eight-week course in meditation, when
given flu shots, “had a more robust antibody
response to the flu shot than the non-meditators.”
In short, their immune systems worked better. In
a test of a Buddhist monk’s ability to maintain
a meditative state even with disruptions, “hooked
to lab devices, the trained monk was asked to fall
into a meditative state and, when the sound of a
gun burst through the room, he did not startle.
On the machines the recording of his brain was calm
and balanced.” That monk would make one heck
of a controlled shooter at craps! No amount of noise
would disturb his relaxed concentration, his form
would be precise, and his results would be excellent.
But you don’t have to be a Buddhist monk to
learn how to “tame the wild monkey” as
the mind is known in some philosophies. With practice
players can get themselves into such meditative
states, often called the “zone” by craps
players, where they are aware of what they are doing
but relaxed and unfazed by anything that is happening
around them. In such mental states, great performances
are possible; great rolls a matter of course.
Controlling performance means having complete control
over your body. Can such a thing be achieved? In
a PBS documentary I saw about a year ago, several
scientists studied a group of monks in the Tibetan
mountains. It seems these monks claimed to be able
to go up into the mountains for an overnight “sleepover”
wearing nothing but a –wet blanket! Yes, in
20 degree below zero weather, with the cameras rolling,
these monks went into the mountain, started meditating
and not only didn’t die but were able to make
those frozen blankets stay wet and then actually
dry them with their body heat. The scientists studying
these fellows had wired them up to judge their body
temperature and it seemed that the monks had somehow,
through their meditation, achieved control of their
autonomic nervous system, in particular their heat
regulating process. Their body temperatures went
up as the outside temperatures went down! And they
stayed up all night long. Again, a craps player
attempting to control the dice and looking to perform
at peak doesn’t have to dry wet blankets on
a windy, brutally cold Tibetan mountaintop, or not
be taken aback by gunshots fired near his head.
What he does have to do is keep his mind contained
and focused on the task at hand. That task, while
mechanical and rote, can only be executed with precision
if the craps player’s mind is “in the
game.” However, knowing that the mind has the
capacity to do extraordinary things helps all of
us try to learn those methods that prevent us from
being “psyched out” and losing our money
when we roll the dice.
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