I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast.
I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time.
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Born in 1945 in Deer Lodge, Montana, Phil Jackson grew up in a strict religious home.
His parents were both Pentecostal ministers and the family spent all of their free time practically at church.
As a teenager, sports and particularly basketball became an escape for Phil and he excelled at it.
Already 6 '5 by his junior year, Phil became his high school's most valuable player.
So, it was no surprise when he got a basketball scholarship to the University of North Dakota.
It was there that Phil began his journey as a seeker, learning about and experimenting with Christian mysticism, Native American rituals and Zen meditation, all later used as principles for his coaching.
In 1967, he was drafted by the New York Knicks where he earned two championship rings in the early 70s and learned the value of awareness, selfless team play and the importance of forging a deeper bond between players.
As head coach, he promoted these same values, guiding some of the greatest sports superstars of our time to play for something greater than themselves.
Players like Michael Jordan, Shaquille O 'Neal and Kobe Bryant.
Dubbed the Zen master for introducing players to meditation, yoga and Tai Chi, Phil was able to use his spiritual influences as a motivator to success.
It's the subject of his latest memoir, 11 Rings, which debuted in true Phil Jackson style at number one on the New York Times bestsellers list.
Well, he's certainly the tallest guest we've ever had on Super Soul Sunday.
Phil Jackson has been called one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time.
But this is not really a conversation about basketball because this is not your average coach.
After all, this is the man they call the Zen master.
Welcome Phil Jackson.
Thank you. It's a pleasure being here.
You know, you're somebody I've wanted to talk to for a long time, for years.
And then I see the title of your new book, 11 Rings, the Soul of Success.
And I thought, whoa, if that is not exactly what I want to talk about.
So what is the soul of success?
Well, beautiful book, must I say.
Thank you. It's great for anybody who, first of all, loves the game, but also leadership, looking for leadership advice or leadership entrepreneurship.
And it's a spiritual book.
Yeah. I want to give people some confidence in trusting their own intuition.
In leading from the inside out, rather than having to follow perhaps, say, Steve Jobs' leadership rules or whatever, to know that you can incorporate what's part of who you identify with and what you've been brought up with and allow that to come through you.
Because I think authenticity is really what it's all about, to be authentic.
To be able to have the courage to follow that which is authentic within you.
That takes courage.
There's no doubt. That takes courage to do it.
So it's so interesting.
You're brought up Pentecostal.
That's right. Let's just define what that means.
Let me say this about that before we start.
My father's family were Puritans.
My mother's family were Mennonites.
They were both from families of people that were religious zealots in many ways.
When the wave of Pentecostalism came through America in the 20s, they followed that.
It was a new spiritual awakening in America.
And a church called Assemblies of God Church and a church called the Church of God both became legitimate Protestant movements at that time.
They were believing in the infilling of the Holy Ghost and the Holy Spirit in your life.
An actual spiritual experience.
So there's a lot of outpouring of the Spirit in the church services that you go to.
A lot of our music that we have in our modern day rock and roll came out of Pentecostal backgrounds.
Jerry Lee Lewis, a pianist, is one of the many that you can name that came out of this.
So it was a religion that was founded on a lot of spirit.
I sat and listened to a lot of sermons and a lot of church meetings over the 17 years I was at home.
And it's very strict.
Very much so. I remember some church people called up my mother and said, I saw your daughter, she had on a pair of capri pants.
My sister was in nursing school.
So you couldn't wear lipstick or makeup or listen to music on the...
Could you listen to music but couldn't listen to music on Sundays?
Well, Sundays were a totally different day.
But my brother could smuggle in a chubby checker and some stuff like that when I was young.
And you and your brother had to go to school in your little white shirts.
Sundays, we stayed in our suits all day long.
So our Sunday playtime between morning service and evening service was relegated to things that were very quiet and allowed that day to be special.
And it was really looked at as like a Sabbath.
Were you made fun of at school because you were the guys...
Holy Rollers. The Holy Rollers.
You were the Holy Roller family.
But things started changing in the 60s.
And my my prowess as a basketball player obviously opened some doors for my family.
Basketball was your door to freedom.
And baseball. I played all the sports.
But you know... But at one point you write that your father and mother had wanted you to start speaking in tongues.
That's right. Yeah.
Which means you're visited by this Holy Spirit.
Yes, you have this infilling experience.
And you know, you have to seek.
It's like you have to pray and people pray for quite a period of time.
And you really have to search your soul.
You know, do I have anything in the way of my being completely open to the Spirit, filling my being?
And it was a question for me all the time as to, you know, am I pure enough?
Am I holy enough? Am I sinless enough to accept this?
So there's always this probing about your inner being and how...
In those years, Phil, were you...
Did you believe? Did you believe what you were being told?
Did you believe that the Lord thy God does not want you to wear capri pants?
Did you believe? No.
No, that part of it was on the...
The chubby checker was a detriment to your soul.
Did you believe that?
Not really. I mean, those things I knew, you know, when I talked to my mother, for example, my mother would come to my bed and say goodnight sometimes and she'd be talking to me.
And we get in these conversations, like we would talk about, you know, why can't we dance?
Why can't we dance?
Well, you can't dance because really it's an awakening of your sexual being.
And at that level of being a young person, when you awaken that being, sometimes people don't stop and it leads to pregnancy and other things.
And so dancing becomes something that we, you know, don't condone.
Yeah. And then everything blew open in the 60s, you know, in the late 60s that, you know, with the advent of, you know, birth control pills, you know, all of a sudden chastity was not something that was being held as a mark of esteem in those ways and experience was what people sought.
And so it was really conflicting for a young person brought up in my age.
Was it about 17 that you first heard about Darwinism?
Yes. Going to college, being a biology student, you know, having to study evolution and getting those concepts that were opposed to my biblical fundamental beliefs.
And what did you think at first?
This is blasphemous?
You know, Oprah is upsetting.
Was upsetting. Yeah.
Deeply upsetting because, you know, what you've believed is, you know, in your heart of hearts, you know, I was a good student of the Bible.
I memorized 175 scriptures going through a catechism.
My mother was a teacher.
What's your favorite scripture?
In times. Yea, though I speak with tongues but do not have the spirit of love.
You know, that's really what I think Paul was talking about.
That's a great scripture.
But, yeah, the advent of the earth only being 8 ,000 years old and all that kind of, 6 ,000 years old and it was really something that I had to, you know, deal with and then it opened the door of education for me.
So did you go from a literal interpretation of the Bible and those stories to a more, a broadened metaphysical, mythical interpretation?
Yeah. Yeah. But you still held to the truth of the stories or the essence of the stories?
Yes, I still held to the idea of, you know, man coming to terms with one God, you know, and then I changed my majors when I was my first semester of my sophomore year of college and began philosophy, psychology and religion and it opened the doors to the perception of how beliefs, how many beliefs man has had
over the course of his history.
And what are things that actually have made sense to people as they come through this corridor of trying to figure out their position in the cosmos?
But I'm wondering, you as a young student of religion, as you are opening the door to seeing a broader way of how the world looks at these things and not just your family and not just your community, did you feel you're going to be struck down every time you introduced a new idea to yourself?
I mean, I've heard people talk about the idea of, oh, wow, when I was trying to leave the religion of my tradition, there's this feeling of, wow, I'm going to get struck by lightning or God is displeased or I'm going to lose my family.
I'm going to lose your family.
That's a big part. You know, my brother, who is four years old, he was instrumental in my life.
He was at college and he had run into some Buddhist teachings.
I was taking a variety of religious thought at the same time, and Buddhism was introduced to me where there's no specific God and the fact that there was a religion that was deeply spiritual that didn't have, say, a deity at the center of it.
My family, they were very opposed to Buddhism because they felt it was idolatry that they worshipped a statue of Buddha.
So I had that impression in my head of Buddhism when I first understood or heard about it.
So all those things I had to deal with as to what is really this all about and come in terms of the fact that this is about an enlightenment that we're seeking.
And here's a person that showed the doors to enlightenment, was a man who they called Buddha, and this statue is a symbol of what we're trying to attain.
You know, I think that there is spirituality in all things.
I can see the sacred in the ordinary things, but I don't think most people, and a lot of them probably who are talking about this book, never thought of the spiritual nature of the game of basketball.
What is that spiritual nature?
Wow. It's such a great community that you have when you play the sport, especially if you get to play it at a high level, that there's this, this is what Sprita Kaur, the word exactly comes from, that there's a spirit among this connected group, a connected group of people.
And this spirituality is not about religion, of course.
It's about the ability to incorporate other beings in your plans, in your system.
And my best nature also elevates their nature.
And basketball or sports does this.
It does this for us as watchers, too, as spectators.
We see something that is a remarkable play, and we want to see it over and over again because it brings an elevated spirit to us that this was not just an individual action.
You say some coaches are obsessed with winning trophies.
Others like to see their faces on TV.
What moves me is watching young men bond together and tap into the magic that arises when they focus with their whole heart and soul on something greater than themselves.
Once you've experienced that, it's something you never forget.
That is the spirituality you're talking about.
Yes, it is. That is the spirit.
That is the soul of the game that you're talking about.
Yeah, it really is.
What did you see, and I mean see, on a deeper level when you first were able to come into contact with the Bulls that first year?
What did you see when you had them standing there on the baseline?
When I first came to Chicago, Oprah, I was assistant coach, and I was just moved into this, so assistant coaching level, as perchance, by luck, by good fortune.
And I saw a team that was searching for an identity.
Their identity at the time was the magic of Michael Jordan, who is astounding, not only the Chicagoans here, but the rest of the basketball world with his prowess on the court.
Everybody wanted clamoring, not just wanting, but clamoring to be part of this superb athlete's life, and I saw this intense drive to be a part of what everybody expected was going to be very exciting, and it was a lot of fun, and the fun generated a lot of energy.
We had a lot of very young players that all of a sudden started maturing in Scotty Pippen and Horace Grant, and then suddenly I was given the head coaching job, and my job was to organize this group of players so that they were not just Michael and the Jordaners, his associating cast, so it was convincing
him that these were really good players that you're with.
You could make them better because that's part of what stardom is all about, is making everybody else a little bit better, and he can do it.
Okay, so you say that it takes a number of critical factors to win an NBA Championship, including the right mix of talent, creativity, intelligence, toughness, and of course luck, but if a team doesn't have the most essential ingredient, love, none of those other factors matter, and you call it the circle of love,
and that literally when you first started coaching, that you were asked to wear your championship rings from your days with an X.
Why? Well, the gentle manager at the time, Jerry Krause, said these guys are going after something, they don't really know what it is.
No one around here has one.
Chicago has never won one.
He wanted them to have a symbol of what the ultimate goal is.
The goal isn't about being the best scorer, being in the all -star team or anything else.
The goal is about winning a championship, and to do that everybody's got to sacrifice, give a little bit more of themselves in the process of bonding together and making this unit a cohesive group.
You talk about Penn of Children's book, Start Where You Are, where one of the things that she states is that what you do for yourself, any gesture of kindness, gentleness, honesty, and clear seeing towards yourself will affect how you experience the world.
That's what she writes.
What you do for yourself, you're doing for others.
What you do for others, you're doing for yourself, and you say this idea would later become a key building block in your work as a coach.
How so? We had a statement that we must have repeated so many times to the players.
No man is an island.
No man goes his way alone.
What I put into the lives of others will come back into its own.
Those words sometimes are difficult for the boys to hear, so then I would say, do you understand what I'm saying?
No man goes his way alone.
We're in this together.
How do you do that?
I don't even know what to describe because I was in Chicago during all of those years where Michael Jordan was a god.
I mean, it was just close to being a god.
Yes, right. Little gee.
As anyone has ever experienced, I'm sure.
Yes. How do you have a sense of cohesiveness and build a team when the whole world, I'm sure that there were, you talk about it, Horace Grant and other players who just couldn't understand that you weren't a part of the media manufacturing machine for all things Michael.
Well, I had a fortunate relationship with Michael.
I didn't buy into that part of his being.
I stayed away from it.
Never asked Michael for autographs, never had a deal with that, and actually had to ask him to cut back from what he was doing.
I don't want you to be the scoring leader.
The scoring leaders have not won championships, Michael, but I want to be the scoring leader, and I think I can still do it.
I'll cut back on my scoring average.
He volunteered to do that.
So that was a relationship that we started out with, that built.
He wanted to cut back on his scoring average because what, you want to give other people on the team.
Everybody else had to be part of it.
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, that point, you know, teams.
Did that feel to him though, like you're asking me to be less than I can be?
I know. Yes. I know he accepted the role, which is wonderful.
Because the leader has to create the space for other people to step forward.
To step in and be bigger.
And be bigger. Right.
Yeah. So after we won that first championship, I thought it was amazing.
The whole city was, I mean, we all went hysterical, ballistic.
And you say, you think it would get easier the second time around, but that's not how it works.
As soon as the cheering stops, the dance of the wounded egos begins.
Yes. Success is as hard to accept as failure sometimes, you know, because everybody wants a piece of it and they want to know that their effort.
Yeah. And then it comes down to a question of character, you say.
Yes, it does. Yeah.
Because character is something that most of us feel, I think most people think you either have it or you don't.
How were you able to see your role as a coach is also instilling or bringing out the best of character in sports.
There are a lot of teaching moments where players are either on the high side or maybe on the low side of what has happened on the court.
And as a coach, you can always kind of bring them right back to the middle road.
That was kind of what my process was.
You know, you're only a success for the moment you do a successful act.
So these acts have to be repeated all the time.
So your exuberance about one successful act or one successful game or one successful season is only a success at that time.
You've got to repeat it or you got to do the same thing again and again and again.
One of the things that you knew you had to do with the Bulls in the beginning here in Chicago and then moving on to the Lakers, especially with Kobe Bryant, and you knew you had to create a team.
You had to build a team.
And one of the ways you did that was the one breath, one mind.
Can you explain how and what did the guys think of you coming in with your Zen stuff?
Here you are. I never couched it in Zen stuff.
You know, I approached it with mindfulness.
Mindfulness, yes. You know, a lot of our players in the NBA are from deeply religious families, very much like my background.
And, you know, anything that would be a conflict of their religious beliefs, I didn't want to touch or get them upset about it.
Isn't it interesting how you knew that because you'd come from that?
Exactly. Yes. Exactly.
Yes. So we talked about mindfulness as being, you know, as much as we pump iron and we run to build our strength up, we need to build our mental strength up.
We need to build our mental strength so we can focus, get one -pointed tension, and so that we can be in concert with one another in times of need.
When you come off the court, you've had a bad call, things going wrong for you, you sit on the bench, you take a breath, and you reseat yourself.
You reset yourself, and you do that through this mindfulness.
You just come right back in and collect yourself.
So we practiced mindfulness is what you have to do.
So you would literally have the guys sit in stillness?
That's right. Meditating?
That's right. Taught them how to hold their hands, where the shoulders had to be, the whole process of, you know, being in an upright situation so that you're not slouched and you're not going to fall asleep, and they bought into it.
Would you do this before every game?
You would do this regularly?
You would do this? We introduced it, and we introduced it in training camp, and then day of games, we started using it, and it ultimately became a process where...
So centering yourself.
That's right. Just getting back and being centered.
Did you not also have them play in the dark at one point?
It wasn't totally dark, but I wanted them to get the idea of being able to do things that are just out of the ordinary, like silence day.
You have a day of just silence.
There's a lot of chatter and basketball, and rightfully, you want players to be talking to each other and communicating with each other.
But sometimes in practice, it gets too verbose, and guys are yelling and having fun with each other and teasing each other.
So I tried to take things out of the ordinary and make them something special so they'd understand the difference.
And so were the guys receptive in the beginning to these new ideas about mindfulness and being able to master the game from the inner?
I think they tolerated it, and I think the reason why they tolerated it, and this is one of the things I talk about in the book, is about being authentic and coming from who you are and what you think is important.
I mean, Oprah, I tried Tai Chi with the players.
They were doing Tai Chi.
We tried yoga. We tried a bunch of things that didn't stick, but what did stick was meditation.
That was always something that was able to stick with these guys.
So powerful. Yeah. And then you move on to the Lakers.
Were your mindfulness practices as embraced as they had been in Chicago?
You know, I think those guys would have laid down and let me run on top of them or something when I first got there.
They were very, very receptive.
There was hiccups along the way, without a doubt.
But as far as being willing learners with an open mind, they're very accommodating for me, and I'm very gracious and glad about that.
You talk about benching the ego in 11 Rings and how important that is as a step to bench that ego.
But in a world where, and particularly for those of us on the outside world, it just looks like, I mean, that's a world filled with a lot of, not just big, but tall egos.
For sure. And money.
And money is there.
And you know, we have a, you know, salary cap and everybody's trying to reach the maximum salary cap.
And there's all these very many great pressures on these young men to really serve themselves because they're thinking it's my family.
I'm looking after my group, my family, my mom, my dad, and you know, they want to provide.
And you have to forget about the family, your contract, where you're going to be next year, the fact that you're not guaranteed.
All these things have to be set aside that we have to be in the moment.
You know, when you address this, I never thought of it this way before for a player.
You said, because I started as a player, I've always been able to empathize with young men facing the harsh realities of life in the NBA.
Now, I thought harsh realities in the NBA.
Most players, you say, live in a constant state of anxiety, worrying about whether they're going to be hurt or humiliated, cut or traded, or worst of all, make a foolish mistake that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
When I was with the Knicks, I was sidelined for more than a year with a debilitating back injury.
And that experience allowed me to talk with players I've coached from personal experience about how it feels when your body gives out and you have to ice every joint after a game or even sit on the bench for an entire season.
You know what I thought when I read that?
No experience ever goes wasted.
But because that had happened to you, you were able to relate to somebody else in your coaching field who had to go through it.
I was once invited to a little conclave that Bill Bradley put it together and he opened it and there were seven couples there that were sharing ideas.
He opened that by saying, I want you each to tell a story of your biggest failure that turned into your greatest asset.
And it was amazing to listen to all the stories.
My story was that story, obviously, sidelined, team playing well in New York.
And having to sit out and the consequence of that led me into greater understanding of being a player, not only that, but a relationship with a coach that probably spawned where I'm at today or my career.
So we talked earlier about you studying different Eastern traditions, various religions, but you were drawn specifically to Zen Buddhism.
Why? Well, I think it's the daily practice of meditation.
I think the form of meditation fits my style really well.
You're beginning your day with a quiet mind and starting your day at peace.
It's kind of getting into a peaceful atmosphere.
It's doing that thing you talk with the players, coming back to center.
Yeah, then you're always capable of bringing yourself back during the day.
Yeah, you share three aspects of it in the book that you like.
It's giving up control, which is so interesting because the world I did until reading this, you think of a coach as being in control of his team, but you maintain control by giving up control.
And particularly, you talk about the years with Dennis Rodman that you knew that the way to control is just to sit back and observe.
One of the manifestos that I have, one of the books that means a lot to me is Zen Mind, Beginner Mind by Shunru Suzuki, who founded the San Francisco Buddhist Center.
And when we try to control our mind, when we try to control our personalities that we're with, it's like trying to control a farm animal, a sheep, a cow in a pasture that's too small for it.
And it'll break through the fences.
And the same thing will happen in the other situations.
You need to have a lot of space to move.
When you meditate, if you get obsessed with something, you'll break through your meditative state or your meditative practice and become focused on this unless you just let it go.
And you understand that in letting it go, you let it go through.
It's like a cloud passing through the sky.
It's like a log floating down the river.
It's there in your sight.
It comes in your mind and then it passes right through.
And it's the same way with a player.
He has some aberrant behavior that's going on.
And if you sit back and you just allow it's happening, it's happening.
Okay. Now he's through.
Now he's centered again.
Now we're okay. Now we're back on beat.
Yeah. And it was kind of like that.
That's a player or your kid, whether it's your child or your player.
Yes. A kid too. Yes.
So it was like that with Dennis and I had watched him before.
He's with the Detroit Pistons and Chuck Daly, who I admired as a coach, you know, was an animated coach.
And as he got animated, Dennis would become more animated on the floors.
Like his energy source was right there feeding into Dennis's energy source.
So I thought this guy is, he sometimes could go over the edge.
I better just sit back and become a quiet, you know, and use that meditation practice while I'm sitting on the bench.
Trusting the moment.
Explain that. Well, this is something that, you know, we all get find a point of tension that we go into and it could be, you know, we get it all the time sitting in traffic, you know, why is this guy in my way or I'm in a hurry and you know, whatever.
There's no need to, to feel like your life's going to be destroyed by this single event that's happening right now.
Just relax and breathe through it.
And that's trusting in that moment.
I think that's why you describe in the book, why Michael Jordan, particularly like your coaching style so much is because even in the most tense of moments and there are seconds remaining in the game, you could go into that centered space for yourself.
That is amazing. Yeah.
Well, yeah. And also living with compassion, how, you know, it feels like compassion and competition are in conflict with one another.
It's hard to be compassionate about your competitor.
I think the compassionate part of it, you know, I always think that, you know, Christianity is centered on love.
Buddhism centered on compassion.
Compassion and love have a very common denominator with each other.
There's very common.
And so it bridges that gap.
And compassion is that deep inner feeling of empathy, sympathy that goes along with seeing someone that, you know, yes, we're on this battlefield or basketball court or whatever it is together.
We're trying to better each one or best each other.
And I'm going to do my best, even though I really care about you and care about your wellbeing.
Yeah. But I'm going to, I'm going to try and do that.
And if you're the best, you're going to, if you're really good too, you're going to bring out the best in me.
And, and that way you can overcome them or over, or win the day or whatever at that time and feel good about the fact that you did without having to get down to hate or, you know, destruct.
I'm going to destroy this guy, you know, that type of attitude.
That doesn't work. It ultimately doesn't work.
What's your definition of God?
The unseen. I don't, I don't know.
I think I am that I am is the biggest definition that I have.
It's simple, you know, knowing I am that I am.
When did you recognize that there was a connection to something bigger than yourself?
I think I had that feeling as a child, watching the spirit move through a group of worshipers.
There was something moving in this audience that was, yeah, that was real.
What's the difference between spirituality and religion?
Doctrine. Doctrine.
Yeah, you get tied up in doctrine and trying to define it and how to get to it.
Spirituality is living in it.
Do you pray? Yeah, I do.
Is your meditation your prayer?
It is. It is. But I have affirmations that I believe in.
I was just going to ask you, do you have a favorite quote or affirmation?
Well, I have a simple prayer that I use.
O thou sustainer of our bodies, hearts, and souls, bless all that we thankfully receive.
And it's, it's a Sufi thing.
Where do you feel most at home or at peace?
I'm a Montana guy. I have a space in Montana that really tunes me in.
Is it a particular space or is it all of Montana?
Well, no, it's Flathead Lake.
There's a big lake.
There's like Tahoe.
It's a big lake and it's serene.
It's a summertime place.
What do you know for sure?
That I'm going to die.
Death is waiting us all.
And that the best thing to do is trying to live this life the best we can.
And that everybody's trying to do their best.
And sometimes they don't even know it.
Wow. I love that it's called 11 Rings.
Is there a part of you that wants a 12?
Maybe in another level.
Is there another level to go to?
I mean, I have a couple playing 11 from coaching.
I have no intention of coaching again.
Physically it's too difficult for me right now.
I do think that I'd like to help somebody else win that ring.
Another of my many guys that are coaching and like the sport.
You would like to coach the coaches?
Yeah, I think that'd be something I could do.
I'm so glad you wrote this book.
I wish we had hours and hours to share it and talk about it.
But I just, I know obviously it's a best seller and that many other people will be opened and enlightened in ways unexpected by reading 11 Rings, The Soul of Success.
Thank you, Oprah. You know, you've done so much for people who read and who are searchers and seekers.
And I value this opportunity to explain this to people.
Well, thank you. Thank you.
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