Your not-so-quiet time

13 June 2017

By Frank Scoblete

The world-famous totally bald monk Swami Ylurt Enasni heads for his cave high in the Himalayan Mountains. He finds his favorite spot in his special place, his very own special place in his special beloved cave, where he assumes the lotus position and begins his slow and steady meditation to his very own personal mantra – an inner sound that takes him elsewhere.

Outside the fierce winds loudly blow and the snow sweeps through the air with tempestuous force. Our monk is soon lost in his own world and the outside fades into the nothingness of existence. Ah, yes, this is the quiet in the storm; a place to go away to in order to find oneself in the silence of one’s own consciousness despite the howling winds and swirling snows.

Swami Ylurt Enasni visits his quiet, peaceful inner world despite the raging world outside the mouth of his cave. In fact the weather is a part of his meditative set up as it is always the same – loud and seemingly distant; the voice of the heavens come to earth. This is what he desires and this is what he gets. Of course, there will come the inevitable day when he leaves his cave, slips on some newly formed ice and goes flying off the cliff where he will die a bloody, horrible though thankfully quick death.

Casino slot players can learn a lot from our monk because I believe many slot players are – in their own ways – monks of the slot machines. They go to the casinos’ slot machines, not to hear the noise of such an object or outside their little playing world, the ever-present noise of the casino environment; those composed of yells, shouts, moans, music and the jingle jangle of simulated coin sounds coming from machines all around them

The sounds of the casino are like the sounds of the whipping winds and speeding snows on the Himalayas. The casino sounds are always out there; they are always out there but as the slot player plays those sounds make up a dreamy backdrop that seems to assist in putting such a player into another universe, an inner, intimate universe.

Many slot players do not play slots to whoop it up, to scream, to clap and yell. They play the slots the way our monk meditates. The actual act of playing creates an altered state of consciousness – perhaps this state is characterized by alpha waves, a sign of the meditation.

Here are some statements from slot players that support my contention:

“I go to the slots to relax. I lose track of time. It is just me and the machine.”

“Unless I hit something big I rarely even notice anything but my machine doing what it does. I don’t think I think very much when I play. I think too much in my normal life. I don’t play the machines to think. I do too much of that already.”

“I am in my own little world when I play. At times I don’t even know I am in a casino. It’s unusual but fun.”

“It’s my own world. I love coming to it again and again.”

“I can’t relax and disappear at the table games. At the machines I am so comfortable that time just flows along without me really noticing and I ride it like a sleepy surfer riding a wave.”

“The sounds of the casino just float through me. They are actually restful to me. That must sound silly but that’s the way it is. I go to the casino not to get hyped.”

As you can see in the midst of the cacophony of Lady Luck’s domain is an invisible cave where a slot player can enter and be in a quiet world that runs in a quiet time. If a person is looking to get lost in an activity that takes him or her away from the mundane things, slots could be one of the finest such activities. It is its own mantra.

When you play the slots you are usually away from others, also away from interfering players who can ruin the gambling experience you are looking for; meaning the meditative experience. You will never get such a meditative experience at a craps game or by playing blackjack or any other table game.

But, sad to say, there is an ice-slick outside the cave of a player’s slot machine meditation – the fact that the player could get so caught up he doesn’t realize how much he might be losing. He can slip – in short – on the ice of the house edge. A bad slip could cause him or her, as it causes our monk, to go flying off the ledge of the mountain to go splash on the rocks below.

So if you are the type of player who might get so deeply into your meditative state when playing the machines that you lose control of what you’ve bet over time, then you must create a way to bring you out of your trancelike state.

Perhaps only put in enough money that you are prepared to lose in say 20 minutes. If you run out of your investment, get up and go to another cave. The casino is full of such caves because they are all in your head now aren’t they?



Frank Scoblete’s latest books are I Am a Dice Controller: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Craps!, Confessions of a Wayward Catholic and I Am a Card Counter: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Blackjack! Available from Amazon.com, Kindle, Barnes and Noble, and bookstores. Visit Frank's web site at www.frankscoblete.com