Reacting vs. Responding: A Buddhist Take on Sport and Everyday Life

What is the difference between reacting and responding, and can you train the gap between the two? In this episode, Glenn from the Columbus sangha takes Buddhist practice off the cushion and onto the ice. He treats curling as a kind of beginner practice (all those long pauses before you release the rock) and football as something more advanced, where players drill their responses so often they turn into muscle memory. Then he catches himself in a false split between a "reactive" sport and a "responsive" one and lands somewhere more useful: the only reactivity you can honestly judge is your own. The sangha picks it up from there, with the biathlete whose heart rate drops to take the shot, curling's everyperson appeal, and one father's story about snapping at a pizza app and watching his son go quiet.