I could play ping-pong for a whole day, and with some opponents the game gets straight-up physical and sweaty, with shouts of triumph and anguish…

But the thing I like most about ping-pong is how sharply it exposes the thinking mind in all its ineffectiveness.

If you look close enough, the thinking mind’s uselessness can be noticed in any game, activity, or endeavor, but it’s easier for it to hide some places than in others. It makes us think it’s doing something helpful.

Not so in ping-pong. The game is just too relentlessly fast.

Just as when driving a familiar route your mind can totally disengage and then “wake up” when you’ve arrived at your destination wondering how you did all the steps to get there… in ping-pong you wake up after every point.

“How did I do that?”

The answer is that “you” didn’t do it. The ego, the part of you that thinks about itself and considers itself to be “you” needed to be completely taken out of the equation for you to get that last return on the table.

Again, every time you do anything well, your thinking mind (that thinks it’s so smart and helpful) had to get out of the way, but it usually swoops in right afterward to say “Look what I just did! Now here’s how you should do it this next time… So, errrrrrrrrrrm.”

Ping-pong forces you out of your head. There’s no time to think. The next point is coming RIGHT NOW. Every point is a two-point swing. There’s no time to get stuck thinking.

Ping-pong zaps you into the present moment like a thunderclap.

I highly recommend getting decent enough at ping-pong to be able to enjoy watching yourself play it.