Lyle's teaching in practice: attention on pain, on fear, and on death

texture · UNDATED (standing); applied ~Nov YDAU

• When: UNDATED standing pedagogy, applied by Hal in the November present (dawn drills; the panic in the hall)
• What: Lyle's method surfaces secondhand in students' practice. Hal, chilled at dawn drills, tries "à la Lyle to focus very intently on the pain of his tooth without judging it as bad or good" (scene 094). Hit by off-court panic, Hal recalls "Lyle had taught us this" — that panic sharpens perception, and "Lyle's counsel had been to turn the perception and attention on the fear itself" (though "he'd shown us how to do this only on-court"). And "For almost a month in the weight room, Lyle had been saying that the most advanced level of Vaipassana or 'Insight' meditation consisted in sitting in fully awakened contemplation of one's own death" (scene 170). The doctrine: non-judgmental attention, even unto death. Lyle is by now an internalized authority for Hal: weighing his reluctance to play, Hal measures "What Schtitt might have to say to that, v. what Lyle would say" (scene 179) — Lyle set beside Schtitt as one of the two voices Hal answers to.