Correction Begins With Admission

Tiger Woods has now ‘rediscovered’ his childhood religion. The championgolfer , who faced censure for his alleged extra-marital liaisons, said he hoped to relearn the lesson of selfrestraint taught by Buddhism. His statement had been analysed “like a State of Union address even though the only union Tiger Woods addressed was his own” , a sympathetic columnist said, “( for) this was no voluntary conversion to an old religion. Rather , this was a forced one to the new Oprahite religion of emotional openness and making public one’s miseries and failings.” 

Newspersons who asked the Dalai Lama to comment discovered that the Tibetan spiritual leader was blissfully unaware of Tiger Woods’ travails, having somehow been uninformed of the golfer’s triumphs as well. When the matter was explained to him, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist extolled the importance of ‘self-discipline with awareness of consequences’ .

The embattled golf champion himself said as much in his carefully scripted statement of apology: in recent years he had ‘drifted away’ from the Buddhist values of his upbringing which taught that “a craving for things outside ourselves causes unhappy and pointless search for security” .

But would that satisfy the scolds berating Woods for letting his impulses get the better of him? As his former coach, Butch Harmon , said, “( They) want Woods to stand there in front of everybody , take his medicine, be humble , be embarrassed, be humiliated , and answer the questions.”

His self-lacerating public apology could also be part of the famous 12-step plan for recovering from addictions, compulsions and other behavioural problems. The process starts with the admission that one is powerless against the demons of addiction and compulsion . One then moves on to admit “a greater power that can give strength” .

One way of achieving this, as encoded by the next step, is by establishing cosmic connections: make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him, says the original Alcoholics Anonymous programme . In its summation, the Bhagavad Gita calls it the supreme secret of transcendence (psychologists might call it ‘transference’ ) which promises to empower the seeker to withstand most severe soul-crushing pressures . But what if one has no faith in redemption? Then beg, borrow or steal some!

Vithal C Nadkarni