The Finger Pointing to the Moon - A Story of Self Realisation!

“The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon”….one of the most famous Zen quotations and one that has set countless people thinking about its meaning over the years. This article is something that I hope very much will not only lead to you achieving a much better frame of mind the next time that you play poker but that it may also enhance your life significantly for the better in all other areas.

This is basically an account about my early years of not just playing poker in live card rooms but also online as well and my self imposed frustrations that were brought about by my inherent inability to be able to accept negative outcomes, us poker players understand them better as bad beats and negative runs.

Emotional stability has never really been a strength of mine but about a year ago, I undertook to learn all about myself and really understand why I behaved the way that I did and why I have done certain things in the past….if that makes any sense.

So in short, I decided to become my very own shrink and get to the nitty gritty of discovering just who and what I was and I set about this task by reading several books that were recommended to me that would help me in this quest. I knew full well that my inability to remain composed during bad runs had cost me a very substantial amount of money over the years. I have tried numerous times to tell myself to stop doing this without success.

But looking back, it was obvious that I had been setting about doing this in the wrong way. That is a bit like telling someone who is overweight and who wishes to lose some weight to simply stop eating so much food. This is not addressing the real problem and it was obvious to me that this was an area that I myself could not solve without seeking help from some other source.

There have been many times during my poker career where I have often asked myself the question of whether I could even cut it at all in this game and especially during the early years. But after reading what for me was a very revealing and eye opening book, I suddenly realised what my problems were.

That book was called “Neurosis and the Human Self” by Karen Horney which is a book that is dedicated to achieving self realisation. For me this was a ground breaking book although quite old now, its impact has still sent shockwaves not just through my life but also through my poker game.

The content of that book can simply not be covered in this article or done any kind of justice. But in short, what that book did for me was to make me realise for the very first time that my early childhood and formative years were still influencing greatly how I was behaving all these years later. Events at school, my parents methods, humiliating experiences in earlier life and the subsequent knock on effects were all explained to me in great detail by Karen Horney.

I actually found the book quite spooky and sad in many places because it accurately highlighted my failures as a human being in many areas and was almost as though the book had been written about me personally. The more that I studied the more self aware I became. It reached a stage where I actually became amazed that I had become a winning poker player at all with the traumatic past that I had and it appeared to me that I should never have been in the proper psychological state to succeed in a game like poker where personal and emotional discipline is so vitally important.

Well I did succeed but only because of sheer bloody mindedness and perseverance. But the sad fact is that I have lost tremendous amounts of money through lacking discipline in the past that has inhibited my progress. But now I actually understand the core reasons for my behaviour patterns for the very first time. But diagnosis of such problems is really only the beginning because unless the diagnosis leads to a cure then you have still not reached the ultimate goal.

This is where we enter the world of Zen and in fact, the other philosophies from the far east as well and in this I mean Buddhism, Tao and Confucianism. But in this article I am going to explain or at least try to explain the Zen philosophy. Although to attempt to do so is in itself a violation of traditional Zen principles as discovering the power of Zen is something that one experiences rather than being told about it or reading about it.

There are also far better accounts of Zen and eastern philosophy than my article and I freely admit that books like “Zen in the art of Archery” by Eugen Herrigel and “Life without Stress” by Dr Arthur Sokoloff are two books that are not only far superior in putting Zen into words than anything that I could ever manage but they are also two books that have changed my life and my poker game as well.

This is an area that nearly all novice and for that matter, intermediate players simply overlook. In fact, many winning and professional players ignore the importance of it as well. Quite simply, the way that you conduct your everyday life away from poker is related to how you will behave at the poker table. Do you seriously think that you can flick a switch at the table and suddenly turn into a poker playing robot?

Do you seriously think that if you become agitated in traffic jams, angered by negative events and suffer from over reaction in general that you can turn all of this off the minute you play poker? You suffer a bad beat, you shrug it off because some book has told you to do so. It happens again and you shrug it off but only now you are not quite as composed as you were the first time. Then it happens again and again and…..SNAP!

Some motorist does something on the road that endangers your safety and you shrug it off. Then it happens again and again and again and SNAP! See the connection, modern western living tests us every single day of our lives. We constantly are in pressure situations and the danger is when we have no emotional outlet from which to escape and something snaps within us.

Learn to Flow

One of the best pieces of advice that I have ever heard was “if you can neither fight nor flee then flow”. The example given concerned a caveman from thousands of years ago who was confronted by a highly dangerous and lethal animal. Instinctively he knew whether the correct choice of fighting or running away was dependent on many factors including how well armed he was at the time.

“Flowing” was not part of the equation and he had but two options. But in modern life we are constantly placed into situations where it is not practical to do either. For instance, let us say that you are in a work environment where you are up for an all important promotion that would mean a big salary increase which knocks on to mean a better standard of living for not only yourself but also your family.

You are not skilled enough to do any other job but your work environment is one of constant conflict and your boss is non other than the boss from hell. You cannot fight him because he is your boss and whatever he says has to be obeyed. You cannot flee either as your families standard of living is depending on you. It is in situations like these when you can neither “fight nor flee” that pressure and stress starts to build.

This is exactly the same with poker. Bad things happen in poker, they are part and parcel of the game. If you try to fight the fundamental nature of poker then you are in for a life of frustration as you are trying to control something that cannot be controlled in the main. Fleeing is not a very palatable option either because this means packing the game in. If you are a winning player then this means losing income and this income could be considerable depending on the individual.

If you are not yet a winning player but are striving to be one then this means giving up on your goal and dream. But there is a third option and that option is to “flow”.  We have all heard the expression “to go with the flow” but yet how many of us have really fully taken on board what this actually means. In fact most old sayings and expressions have deep underlying meanings that can alter and transform a person’s life for the better when fully understood and implemented.

Rather than attempt to fight our surroundings then it is far better to attempt to accept them for what they are and flow with them. An example might be when you are stuck in a traffic jam. Rather than get angry and frustrated and agitated, why not turn on your radio or play your favourite CD and relax. Treat the traffic jam not as an annoying situation but as an opportunity to sit in isolation without interruption and listen to your favourite music. This different outlook to what is an annoying everyday and unavoidable occurrence can be applied to almost everything that could possibly occur in daily life.

Money…..the big evil!

Money is perhaps the biggest reason for why players fail to become successful in poker! Why is this so? Well, this is because we value money so much and we definitely live in a very materialistic world these days where money and possessions equal status and this enables people to have better standards of living, increased status, better image and all of the rest that comes with it.

But it is because poker is played for money that leads so many people to want some of it. In fact they want it so much and are so eager to get it that they simply don’t give themselves enough time to become good enough in order to be able to get it. This leads me onto another very important point that emanates from Zen. This is that we must stop striving to achieve something and just try to let it happen naturally. It is this constant striving to win money in poker that is actually preventing people from being able to do it. Some time ago, I made it my goal in poker NOT to win money but to become absorbed with the sheer process of reading, writing, playing and coaching poker.

To love something for the sheer joy of just doing it irrespective of financial incentives is the ultimate goal that we must all seek not just in poker but in any field. I have always felt that this is a major reason for why students drop out of university. They just did not love the subject that they were studying well enough. To truly be in love with a subject, the individual will feel intense passion and drive not just in those initial first few months but until the day that they die.

Now, whenever I am reading or writing or playing poker then I just do not see that as work but more like an enjoyable hobby and it is this kind of outlook that makes winning automatic. This leads me to quote yet another famous Zen saying and that is that “it is the journey itself that is the true goal”.

The point is that with a game as complex as poker, you can never ever know everything that there is to know. This is undoubtedly a good thing because if we could master poker in a very short space of time then poker would not have the appeal that it does. Imagine for a minute if poker could me mastered as easily as the good old traditional game of noughts and crosses! Poker as a game would never have taken off and this would have been because the game was just too easy.

Yet it is truly amazing that so many players can assume that they know poker all because they have read several books. I am in a position now where I literally have people approaching me from all over the world asking my advice on gambling matters. But that would never have been the case had I simply stopped learning all those years ago by thinking that I knew it all. I literally cannot wait to find out tomorrow what I do not know today.

Zen and the study of other eastern philosophies like Confucianism has highlighted to me that much of what I perceived to be my earlier goals in poker, making money, winning, avoiding tilt etc were actually leading me down the avenue to being stressed and unhappy not just with my poker game but with my everyday life as well.

It can be tremendously difficult when you are totally absorbed with something not to let that interfere with your everyday life and your personal life. When you have just lost 200 big bets at limit hold’em then you could just turn into the type of person that your wife or girlfriend does not want to be around.

My girlfriend can tell when I have had a particularly nasty session because of how dejected and fed up I look. While I don’t start screaming and shouting, my mood still rubs off onto her substantially and she knows when I am having to force a smile and look happy. While I control myself very well at the table these days during bad runs, I still find it difficult to shrug it off away from the table and it certainly does affect my personal life.

But the study and application of Zen cannot be achieved by reading this article or a handful of books for that matter. It is something that one must constantly strive towards and for some Zen practitioners, true enlightenment can come in the blink of an eye from the most obscure of sources and in an instant, a persons life has been totally transformed.

To truly master poker then we must strive to master ourselves. Learning the technical part of the game although complex in its own right is still only half the battle. Many people who come to poker can often succeed over some players who have studied long and hard in a very short space of time due to the fact that they already possessed the required mental outlook not only to poker but also to life in general.

I apologise if this article has left the reader with even more questions regarding Zen and that I have not provided all or even most of the answers. But that in a nutshell is the sheer essence of Zen, it simply cannot easily be put into words but anyone who attempts to broaden their knowledge of eastern philosophy by studying Zen may find something remarkable happening. They may just wake up one day with totally different outlooks not only to life in general but also to how they play poker as well……and that has to be worth taking a look at!