Zen and the Art of Pinball - Peter Philippson

Manchester Gestalt Centre

Tel: 0161 257 2202 email: mgc@mgc.org.uk

Zen and the Art of Pinball

by Peter Philippson

My younger son came to me one day when he was eight years old and said: "You know the theory of destiny: that we are destinied to do what we do? Well I don't agree with that. We are destinied to be where we are; what we do with it is ours."

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Suppose you've never seen a pinball table before, and come across one for the first time. Stripped of all the flashing lights and noises, what you see is a large bagatelle game, most of which operates automatically. It seems the only control you have is the spring-loaded plunger and two flippers. If you then try and play the table, you discover that most of the movements of the ball are entirely random and out of your control.

Then you watch a 'pinball wizard': the ball moves precisely to the places needed to rack up points and replays. So what extra control is involved? Purely mechanically, there are three mechanisms involved: precise control of plunger speed, which controls where the ball goes first; precise timing of flipper use, so the ball goes off at the right angle (which would sometimes involve just letting the ball bounce off the flipper rather than being flipped, or trapping the ball at rest with the flipper); and 'nudges', where the table is nudged gently to slightly deflect the ball at the moment it hits an obstacle and changes direction (you must nudge gently, or the table registers a 'tilt' and penalises you).

OK, now you know! However if you try and play with this extra information, you will find that you will not score much more. But what you need to know is that you have all the technical information needed to achieve a large measure of control of the ball, just like the experts. So what do you lack? Practice, yes, but practice to do what?

Watch the experts: there is concentration, and more. They seem to be at one with table, controlling the ball with their whole bodies, indeed as part of their bodies, an extra limb. Aiming a ball at a target is now no more calculated than controlling your leg muscles to walk.

Where does Zen come in? In a world which seems to determine our lives, Zen and most humanistic therapies assert the possibility of achieving liberation from the internal and external chains that would bind us. Furthermore, Zen paradoxically says this can be achieved by realising that we are not separate from the rest of the universe; the ego which says "Now I will press the left flipper button...now I will nudge the table diagonally up and left..." impoverishes both our pinball and our lives. Technically, most of us have more than enough information to control our lives, but it is only as we learn to realise our oneness with ourenvironment that we discover that the small choices we make at each moment can come together into a pattern of life of our own choosing.

There are several traps along the way: firstly, the illusion of powerlessness we abstract from the smallness of our individual choices (looking at the pinball table for the first time); secondly, the illusion that the answer lies in amassing large amounts of knowledge (learning about plunger, flippers and nudges); thirdly, taking enlightenment as a goal in life rather than a recovery of something always available to us (getting addicted to pinball).

Finally, we need to be aware that, for all our skill, the ball will eventually go out of play, and the game will end. If I am desperate to avoid this, I will never push the plunger, I will stop the ball on the flippers, playing 'safe' to avoid the end of the game. The life will have gone out of my pinball, and I will fail to achieve anything on the scoreboard. In accepting the game, and knowing that it will end some time, I can play my game at my highest level of skill, and then, when the time comes, withdraw and leave the table to others.

Pinball is not unique: there are many recognised Zen arts (martial arts, dance, painting, calligraphy, etc.). However, you are unlikely to see these practiced in the West with as much dedication as I used to give to pinball. Watch a good player on a good table before they all get replaced by video games and you may discover an extra dimension to your life!

Peter Philippson, 3.11.96

Peter Philippson is an UKCP-registered Gestalt psychotherapist and trainer, a Teaching and Supervising Member of the Gestalt Psychotherapy Training Institute UK, a founder member of Manchester Gestalt Centre and a guest trainer for Teamwork in Edinburgh. He is editor of 'The Nature of Pain' and (with John Harris) co-author of 'Gestalt: Working with Groups' and co-editor of 'Topics in Gestalt Therapy', all published by Manchester Gestalt Centre, and many articles on Gestalt psychotherapy and groupwork in Britain and abroad.

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