Buddhism, Dale Earnhardt and NASCAR
I thought I’d seen everything in this sport until the other day when a new book arrived in the mail here at NASCAR Scene. The cover featured an illustration of a bobblehead Buddha on the dashboard of a race car, and if that wasn’t enough to hint at what the book was about, the title made it clear: “Buddha on the Backstretch: The Spiritual Wisdom of Driving 200 MPH.”
I’d bet if you went to a typical Sprint Cup race, you’d be able to count the number of Buddhists in the crowd on one hand, even if you had lost several fingers in an industrial accident. But the book’s author, Arlynda Lee Boyer, has been a practicing Buddhist for more than 10 years. Long before she embraced the religion, however, she was a devoted NASCAR fan, and more specifically, a big Dale Earnhardt fan.
She says that after her conversion to Buddhism, she couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the ancient Eastern religion and NASCAR, the Southeastern religion.
“Gradually, it dawned on me that the practice’s dedicated teachers, its monks and nuns deep in intense training, with their laser focus on enlightenment, their serene acceptance of death, and their infectious joy, reminded me of someone: race-car drivers.”
Boyer admits that NASCAR drivers are mostly Protestants, yet again and again, she kept seeing Buddhist principles at work in the sport: “To drive as Earnhardt did, [drivers] must stay on the ragged edge of control, barely hanging on to a car … for three to four solid hours, and they must never once panic.”
Opening this book, my expectations were low, simply because of the whacky premise suggested in the title. But Boyer did a nice job of researching her subject matter and makes some interesting observations comparing the sport and religion. She returns again and again to the subject of Earnhardt, even recounting heartfelt conversations he’d had with Darrell Waltrip and others through the years. She admits Earnhardt himself probably would have “rolled his eyes” at the mention of karma but that, “he would have appreciated the qualities at the heart of Buddhism – self-awareness, presence, compassion and joy.”
If you’re interested, the book is published by Mercer University Press.
