We all play and enjoy the sport of darts for many reasons. Some of you are relentless individuals that have a passion for the head to head competition. Some do it for the social interaction and meeting new friends. Some do it because they are exhibitionistic in nature and love the feeling of the rush one gets when the pressure is on and they come up with the game winning shots. Some do it just because darts is something that they have fun with and some do it just because they “Want To Get High.” Notice that I never mentioned the word drugs. This is a new concept, at least in print. Most all of you have never heard of this concept before. Understandably so, because it more of a concept that is from Eastern religions and philosophies. Zen Buddhism has been around for quite some time. Basically, a goal of their practitioners is to raise their level of consciousness to where they are “One with the Universe,” which is actually a natural high! This is done by a conditioning process which uses different activities. Among these activities are: the tea cup ceremony, flower arrangement, and archery. There is a popular book that touches upon the activity of archery in the light of zen, and that is “Zen in the Art of Archery,” written by Eugen Herrigel. If you have the opportunity to obtain a copy of this book and read it, keeping in mind our perspective of darts, you will be able to understand the direct correlation between darts and archery. Personally, I feel that between the two, archery and darts, darts is actually the better medium, simply because in darts, you don’t have the instrument of the bow to work with, so it’s just you and the arrow (dart). This is highlighted when the author writes about the act of shooting the arrow (dart). If you keep the correlation of darts in mind while you are reading it, you will understand that the dart shooter becomes six things at one time: the aimer, the aim, the thrower, the throw, the hitter and the hit.
How many times have we all experienced the rush during the process of throwing three well placed darts and then the mental exhilaration afterwards? Personally, I feel that this is truly the reason why we are all playing darts. It’s just that no one has understood the correlation before. We do it to get high! So I propose the new slogans for bumper stickers around the world, “Play Darts To Get High!” and “Do Darts, Not Drugs!”
What did the Buddhist Monk say to the hot dog vendor?
“Make Me One With Everything!”