Shooting is one of the oldest sports and has been part of the Olympic programme right from its first edition, held at Athens in 1896. Currently, among others, it includes pistol, rifle and shotgun events. A total of 15 events will be held in the next year’s Olympics at Paris.
In the pistol and rifle events, shots are fired at targets over a distance of 10, 25, or 50 metres; participants have to fire 60 shots in the qualification round, and the top few shooters enter the finals. Shotgun events entail shooting at flying clay birds and not static targets. What looks like a pure, docile sport with nothing much to be done, technically is an extremely difficult one, requiring peak fitness, endurance, strength – physically, and complete focus and meditative calmness – mentally. This is one sport that exemplifies the often-quoted Bhagwad Gita verse 2:47: ‘Thy right is to work only, but never to its fruits; let the fruit-of-action be not thy motive, nor let thy attachment be to inaction.’
What spectators generally see is the shooter taking an aim at the target, steadying himself and firing the shot. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Delve a little deeper into the physics behind it and you realise that the slightest degree of movement of the barrel at the moment of release of the shot gets amplified when the pellet/ bullet reaches the target, resulting in it deviating from the target’s perfect centre.
Now here comes the tricky part. While predictably, we would think of focusing on the target, much more important, or rather the only important thing is to keep the barrel dead straight, without even the slightest movement at the time of shot release. This is only possible when the shooter is focused on the fore and rear sights of the weapon; each weapon has sights which when aligned perfectly, meaning the barrel being dead straight, carry the shot to the target’s centre, and noton the target. Physics again tells us that a perfect trigger release with perfect alignment will automatically hit bullseye. So herein comes the Gita verse. The sole focus of the shooter has to be on the sights of the weapon, on the effort put in, and not the target, fruits of action, which automatically would result in a perfect shot. Any wavering of focus away from the sights and on the target, and the shooter is doomed. One point lost and he would tumble down the rankings. The shooting sport technique perfectly aligns with the purport of the verse.
While a lay spectator of the sport or a novice would think of the target, that is the result, the right way to fire a shot is focusing on the sight alignment, the effort. That’s what the Gita exults us to follow – Focus on efforts, not fruits of action.
Just imagine doing this precisely 60 times and later again in the finals and yet again one on one if there is a tie. What a Zen-like state top shooters must be achieving when participating in the sport, and later carrying that on in daily life. A mere focus on this one single verse and its genuine implementation would in itself be a big effort to achieve remarkable results in all of one’s endeavours
By: dailysportsupdates
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