Yogi Berra-roshi

Major League baseball player and manager Yogi Berra was an iconic figure in the America of my childhood. Not so much for his stats, though they were impressive, but for his way with language. Several of his declarative statements – "It ain't over 'til it's over;" "It's déjà vu all over again;" "When you come to a fork in the road, take it" – have become clichés in American English, declaimed by speakers who neither realise the syntactic complexity in what they've just said or know who they're quoting.

And there are many more of these Yogiisms. So many that entire books, and even websites, are given to preserving this wisdom that flexes so many neurons we seldom use. But at least one of Yogi's aphorisms has always intrigued me.

"We made too many wrong mistakes" was his response to a journalist who asked why, in his opinion, his team had lost a game. It got the usual good-natured laugh from fans, but I maintain this is perfectly logical and not a malapropism at all.

Because mistakes are not created equal.

Sometimes you defer to another's opinion, even though you know his or her proposal is non-performing. In other moments you allow your own arrogance or apathy to determine a course of action without due consideration. Or you fall back on a method that already hasn't worked several times, in the lazy hope it magically will this time.

These are wrong mistakes, made against better judgement or scruples, arising from beginningless anger, greed, and ignorance, predisposed to fail or complicate other issues.

Then there are instances where you try a thing that should theoretically work, though you can't control all the variables. Or you press a strategy that's borne fruit other times, only to discover one of its limitations. Or you set an untried course because the standard response is unethical. You take your best shot, something else that might work, in the conviction that the experience will ultimately lead to a principled alternative, whether the present experiment pans out or not.

Those are right mistakes. You make them in good faith, for good reasons. And pass or fail, that kind of mistake clarifies data and contributes to future endeavours.

They are in fact the driving force of progress, without which we stagnate and die.

So I try to apply the Yogi Principle to innovations in my Zen practice. Am I yielding to a wrong temptation – how does it fare on the Eight Worldly Dharmas scale? – or is my proposed change grounded in a genuine desire to optimise my well-being and that of others, now and in future.

It's easy for eremitical monastics to wander into cul de sacs, given the paucity of human sangha around us. So you've got to keep your own ego in view, and that of teachers and other influences.

Because ninety per cent of this game is half mental.


(Photo of 1951 Yogi baseball card courtesy of Bowman Gum and Wikimedia Commons.)