The concentration of will and awareness in sport is heightened, we believe, because it takes place in the midst of winning and losing, amid dramatic ups and downs. The participant who perseveres in a sport has to learn the poignant lesson — at some level at least — that there is an interior grace that transcends the world's uncertain results. Sport can teach us the ancient wisdom that by losing our lives we gain them. A famous spiritual teacher wrote: "You may take this for the truth, that when a free mind is really disinterested, God is compelled to enter it."
— Michael Murphy, Rhea White, In the Zone