Ping Pong As a Spiritual Practice

I’m slowly reading the letters of Swami Premeshananda (1884-1967), a saintly monk of the Ramakrishna Order in India, collected into a book entitled Go Forward. The swami was a genial fellow, but his ideas are standard yogic theory, except for this letter from Sargachi dated August 20, 1961:

There is a new game, table tennis, which is really quite fascinating. If you sit quietly just after playing, the game will naturally fill your mind. So when sitting for your daily devotions, first spend a little time letting your mind roam about every corner of the Dakshineswar Kali temple. Or mentally wander through Belur Math and circumambulate the temple. If you do this for some time, your mind will run towards Thakur [Ramakrishna].

I always suspected that ping pong was a path to liberation.