#In the middle free

As one teacher put it, “The middle path does not go from here to there. They describe the ability to live in the reality of the present. What do these mysterious words mean? They are attempts to describe the joyful experience of moving out of time, out of gaining or losing, out of duality. neither arrest nor movement.” The sage Shantideva calls the middle way “complete non-referential ease.” The Perfect Wisdom Text describes it as “realization of suchness beyond attainment of good or bad, ever present with all things, as both the path and the goal.” Neither flesh nor fleshless /Neither from nor towards. Eliot calls this the “still point of the turning world. In the middle way, we come to rest in the reality of the present, where all the opposites exist. Trusting in the middle way, there is an ease and grace, a cellular knowing that we too can float in the ever-changing ocean of life that has always held us.īuddhist teaching invites us to discover this ease everywhere: in meditation, in the marketplace, wherever we are. I realized that the water would hold me, that I could float. But one morning there came a magical moment lying on my back when I was held by the teacher and then released. I was a skinny, shivering boy flailing around, trying to stay afloat in a cold pool. I remember first taking swimming lessons when I was seven years old. Learning to rest in the middle way requires trust in life itself. You will see many strange and wonderful things come and go, but you will be still. All kinds of wonderful, rare animals will come to drink at the pool, and you will clearly see the nature of all things.

Then your mind will become still in any surroundings, like a clear forest pool. Sometimes Ajahn Chah described it like a koan, where “there is neither going forward, nor going backward, nor standing still.” To discover the middle way, he went on, “Try to be mindful, and let things take their natural course. The more we delve into the middle way the more deeply we come to rest between the play of opposites.

#In the middle free

The middle way describes the middle ground between attachment and aversion, between being and non-being, between form and emptiness, between free will and determinism.

Even so have I, monks, seen an ancient path, an ancient road traversed by the rightly enlightened ones of former times,” said the Buddha. “It is as if while traveling through a great forest, one should come upon an ancient path, an ancient road traversed by people of former days. This is a universal truth discovered by all those who awaken. It is the middle path that brings freedom. If we fight against ourselves and reject the world, we are not free. If we seek happiness purely through indulgence, we are not free. This is the way to peace and liberation in this very life.”

At twilight, a hundred monks could be found seated in the open-air meditation pavilion, surrounded by the towering trees and dense green forest, reciting these original verses: “There is a middle way between the extremes of indulgence and self-denial, free from sorrow and suffering. In the monastery we contemplated the middle way. My teacher Ajahn Chah talked about the middle way every day. This realization is called the middle way. It teaches us to be in the world but not of the world.

It shows us the paradox of the universe, within and beyond the opposites. Buddhist psychology is neither a path of denial nor of affirmation.