Spiritual Practice at the Poker Table of Life

By David Kunin

The book includes an introduction and nine chapters.

Chapter One: 18 Ways Poker is Like Life
Chapter Two: 9 or 10 Reasons to Bring Your Spiritual Practice to the Poker Table
Chapter Three: What is a Spiritual Practice, Anyway?
Chapter Four: Facing Death
Chapter Five: Facing Aggression, Anger & Hatred
Chapter Six: Money
Chapter Seven: Meditation
Chapter Eight: Love
Chapter Nine: Inside and Outside

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Kunin
• Release date: Feb 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311743398

David Kunin

David Kunin is a retired hospice RN living in New York City. He publishes his short fiction and essays on his Substack "Off The Cushion." Dagger Jameswood is his first published novel.

Book preview

SPIRITUAL PRACTICE AT THE POKER TABLE OF LIFE

by David Kunin

 Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2016 David Kunin

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you so much for purchasing this eBook. If you would like to share this book with another person (and I hope you do!), please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, then please visit your favorite eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. The only real copyright protection I have is your good will and respect for my hard work.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to:

my loving compañera Rosario,

my amazing son Abraham,

and to Leo (a pretty cool Shitzu).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter One: 18 Ways Poker is Like Life

Chapter Two: 9 or 10 Reasons to Bring Your Spiritual Practice to the Poker Table

Chapter Three: What is a Spiritual Practice, Anyway?

Chapter Four: Facing Death

Chapter Five: Facing Aggression, Anger & Hatred

Chapter Six: Money

Chapter Seven: Meditation

Chapter Eight: Love

Chapter Nine: Inside and Outside

Contact the Author

INTRODUCTION

This book is not about winning more (or losing less) at poker. It is not about plugging the leaks of your chips. It is about plugging the leaks in your mind. The reason it is possible to bring a spiritual practice to the poker table is that it’s possible (and necessary) to bring a spiritual practice to any aspect of your life. In fact, that is one of the characteristics of a spiritual practice: it is very portable. A good spiritual practice can go into any situation it is possible for a human to go.

Poker has many similarities to life. Poker is a game of symbols, and many of the symbols in poker are actual and real things that exist in your life.

For example, many people would call money real, and say that poker chips are a symbol for money. But hopefully you can see through that one. Money itself is only a symbol. A $100 bill is no less symbolic than a poker chip. You can grind a poker chip into dust; you can rip a $100 bill into pieces. What happens when you do that?

In other words, what is money? Not the symbols, but money itself? Some would say energy; others would say a money is exchange. Some would say that a currency represents the current that passes between us all as we exchange and share so much.

All of us are breathing the same oxygen molecules over and over. It is astounding when you think about it. You cannot inhale without breathing in molecules that already have been inhaled by multitudes of beings, human and animal; even the poker players across the table from you have exhaled some of what you are inhaling. I call that sharing and exchange. And it is not symbolic of anything; it is real.

And it is profound and amazing,

Exchange is the name of the game. You cannot live your separated life without exchanging this for that, whatever it might be. The paper and coins, the checks and the credit cards, the poker chips, the bitcoins: whatever the form it takes, money (and poker chips) symbolize exchange. They symbolize the back and forth, the good and the bad, the highs and lows, the winning and the losing, the ups and downs, the moments of fullness and emptiness that happen in our very real lives.

So: you take your money, which could be in the symbolic form of pieces of paper called cash, and you go to the window in a casino and buy a different symbolic form of money call chips. Then you sit down at a real table with your symbolic chips.

These chips represent something that is important to you, but with which you are willing to gamble. They are, in effect, a symbolic extension of you, of yourself, of your Self.

Simply put: the activity of playing poker will result in either more or less chips being in your life.

The reason that poker is such a good place to bring your spiritual practice is that that the ups and downs of your stack, this extension of yourself, will affect you. It will make a difference in your emotional life whether you are winning or losing, making good bets or going on tilt. Or maybe you have seen through winning and losing, and it matters more to you if you are playing well or playing badly. Whatever your standards: there will be pleasurable, enjoyable feelings when things are going how you want them to go; and painful, difficult feelings when things go some other way than how you wanted them to go.

In a spiritual practice, it is important to see that both feelings have the same foundation.

How can feelings of winning and losing, of pleasure and pain, have the same foundation? Well, that’s one of the reasons I wrote the rest of the website. Remember, this is only an introduction.

The poker table is a perfect place for spiritual practice. Being in a place that will rock your ideas of who you are is perfect for a spiritual practice. Thought you were making a great fold when that asshole across the table three-bet into you? How do you feel when he shows you 2-3? Off-suited, no less? And then he calls you an idiot?

Is that a good moment for a spiritual practice?

I think so.

Return to Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

18 Ways Poker is Like Life

FIRST THOUGHT

Before I started to write this chapter, I had always hated all those lists, like Seven Things You Should Never… or Five Reasons You Should Always… blah, blah, blah. The only list I was ever going to write was going to be Top Ten Reasons You Should Never Write a List.

But as I was trying to write a coherent chapter on the relationship I saw between poker and life, I looked at all the ideas I had outlined that I wanted to include. I realized I had already written a list. Really? A list? Hmmm. Maybe if I just fleshed out, it could be a web page.

So: here we go!

1. Sitting down at the poker table is like being born

Being born (as in literally being inside a woman’s womb and getting pushed out through her vagina by a contracting uterus) is a transition. One thing (floating in dark emptiness) was happening and then, lo and behold, another thing is happening (cord cut, air to breathe, light to see). I do hope you don’t think of your life as dark emptiness and sitting at a poker table is the only place where you come to life. It’s nice to have a little more balance than that. But whatever your life is, when you first sit