Former Australian opener Matthew Hayden will be sharing a spiritual stage with Indian yogi, mystic and author Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. Two living legends from different walks of life will be enlightening many a lives with their spiritual wisdom.
The event – In Conversation with Mystic Beyond Boundaries – is scheduled for July 25, Thursday, at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.
In Conversation with the Mystic is a series of fascinating episodes where eminent personalities from various walks of life explore a range of topics with Sadhguru. “This is not about being superhuman – this is about realizing that being human is super!,” says Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev about the event.
If sports is the identity of a devout Catholic Hayden, the spiritual leader Sadhguru has been no less passionate about sports. “Competitor extraordinaire, Sadhguru has tried his hand at many a sport and excelled at quite a few. Schedule permitting, he is always ready for a game of volleyball, billiards, cricket, frisbee or dodgeball,” states his brief profile onisha.sadhguru.org.
Sadhguru narrates an interesting tale about his encounter with golf during a visit to the USA. “When I first started playing, I asked a few golfers, ‘How far do the big shots hit in championships go?’ They told me, ‘A really great shot is around three hundred yards. They can go beyond that, but three hundred yards means it’s really great. Anywhere, over two hundred yards is a very good shot.’
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“I took a shot and just hit the ball. It went 325 yards. They said, ‘But Sadhguru, this is impossible. You have played golf somewhere’.
“I told them, ‘Even now I don’t know a damn thing about golf. But you want the ball to go there, I know how to send it there.’
“That’s all I know with life also. I want it to go there, I know how to send it there. I don’t know anything else. And that’s all you need to know. Otherwise you will know everything but you will not know where to go.”
That’s the difference spirituality makes to sports.
That difference can also be identified with Hayden, who has been a devout Catholic since childhood. “Religion has been a tremendous reference point for me. When I’m in trouble, I ask: ‘What would Christ do?’,” that is the spiritual side of a champion cricketer.
If Sadhguru’s example above defines what divinity means to sports, the great sporting hero narrates how religion is a way of life. In a recent interview with Perth World Youth Day coordinator Anita Parker, Hayden said that being a Catholic means being a leader, “because you have to challenge the way your peer group will want to steer you in a certain direction. “You have to challenge the way you want to be a witness to Christ. That means going to Mass on the weekend becomes a priority rather than going to a disco.
“It takes a lot of courage and it also takes a lot of persistence because you won’t always go to Mass and get something unbelievable out of it. It’s like scoring a hundred.
“When batting, I make this Sign of the Cross on my palm. I actually love doing that because when I make the cross across the middle I have a little saying that says ‘Whatever happens today, it’s for You (God)’. That’s part of what I do. I love that part of the day.”
The session Brisbane on Thursday next week is going to be an enlightening one in more than one ways between a divine soul who masters sports with serenity and a master sportsperson with the serenity of a Buddhist Monk, who has turned professional speaker after retirement from cricketer as a professional.
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