Our Metaphysical Times contributor and now local resident Oren Pierce who authors the Nowella and Threadbear stories, designs oracle cards, and offers himself as a private investigator, also offers what he calls Zen of Badmitten instruction, which is intensive, costly, and of goes on for years, but is simple at the outset and you can get started on your own. for whatever reason, Oren prefers the badmitten spelling to the normal badminton, at least until he gets a new business card.
Oren was raised in extreme poverty on the fringes of the Fort Drum military reservation, living after the age of six behind the main shack in the chicken house, which was not all that different from the main shack, had no real toys, even balls and bats, but he and his siblings made do with what was lying around and what they could scavenge in the back yard dumps around the Reservation’s borders. They did come home with a pair of snow shoes, a common item up there in that era before snowmobiles, and using these as raquets, they played a primitive form, of badmitton, though they had never heard of the game, and they played with real birds instead of the conventional, feathered, shuttlecock..
If you were to take instruction in Zen badmitten you would, as with the bow in Zen of Archery learning, endure the whole first year of training without being allowed to even pick up the raquet. You would just be chasing birds, which you can start doing right now.
