The Middle Path

“Let me tell you about the middle path. Dressing in rough and dirty garments, letting your hair grow matted, abstaining from eating any meat or fish, does not cleanse the one who is deluded. Mortifying the flesh through excessive hardship does not lead to a triumph over the senses. All self-inflicted suffering is useless as long as the feeling of self is dominant.

You should lose your clinging involvement with yourself and then eat and drink naturally, according to the needs of your body. Clinging attachment to your appetites – whether by deprivation or indulgence – can lead to slavery, but satisfying the needs of daily life is not wrong. Indeed, to keep a body in good health is skillful, for it supports the mind in staying strong and clear.

This is the middle path.”

--- The Buddha from “Discourse One”

The Buddha had lived a life of indulgence before setting off to become a yogin. And then after six years of extreme austerities, on the verge of collapse, if not death, he decided to bathe and eat, build up his strength and stamina and eventually broke through to full awakening. And from the first teachings of what became a 40-year teaching career, he taught the middle path, and ever since, this moniker has become synonymous with Buddhism.

The Emaciated Buddha after years of extreme tapas

Even to this day, there are yogins in India practicing the extreme forms of renunciation, but what the Buddha is reminding us, whether we abstain from or indulge in our appetites, though it looks very different, there is the same fixation on the self. And it is this fixation that traps us in the round of dukkha (dissatisfaction, stress, suffering, pain).

In another teaching from later in his career, he had a student who had been a veena player. The veena is a lute-like stringed instrument, and the Buddha, consummate teacher that he was, addressed Sona’s experience as a musician to teach him the middle path of practice. He must have noticed Sona sitting in meditation either in a collapsed, overly loose way or in what zen teachers refer to as the “stone Buddha,” sitting rigidly and overly stridently effortful. The Buddha asked:

“Sona, what happens when you tighten the strings of the veena?”

Sona replied, “The pitch increases.”

“And if you continue to tighten the string?” the Buddha asked.

“Then eventually the string will snap,” replied Sona.

“And what happens when you loosen the strings?” the Buddha continued.

“The pitch decreases,” Sona answered.

“And again, if you continue to loosen the strings?” asked the Buddha.

“Then the string will become so slack that it won’t make any sound” Sona replied.

“Then how do you make the strings sound harmoniously? the Buddha responded.

“By making them not too tight and not too loose” said Sona.

“And that is how you should practice meditation” the Buddha pointed out.

Now, raised as we are on fairly tales, many who hear this story assume that once one is not too tight, not too loose, we live “happily ever after” as if “not too tight, not too loose” was a permanent state of being. But any string player will tell you, that “not too tight, not too loose” is always a relationship to circumstances. If you tune in a room that is 70-degrees F and 30% humidity, and then move into a room that is 85-degrees and 75% humidity, you are going to have to retune!

We are always having to make adjustments to ever-changing circumstances. There is no such thing as balance so much as we are continually balancing. It is a dynamic process and relationship and to maintain this relationship requires vigilant mindfulness.

This is important to understand because otherwise the “middle path” may be misunderstood as equivocal, but it is properly understood as “upright, centered, and neutral.” The middle path requires us to investigate and penetrate life’s circumstances with as unbiased an attitude as possible (which is where a metacognitive aspect comes into mindfulness practice; we need to learn about and be alert to biases such as the confirmation bias in order to compensate and correct for it). In order to see clearly so that we can respond skillfully and wholesomely to life’s ever-changing conditions, we need to position ourselves in a stable, neutral, upright, unbiased attitude. Those of you familiar with the definition of yoga-asana may see some similarities here! From this stable, yet relaxed grounded position, we can investigate our situation from various angles, analyze what we discover (uncover), understand clearly (clear comprehension, as the satipatthana has it) and find a creative and skillful response. In this way, we can liberate ourselves from our conditioned, biased reactivity and move toward the skillful response.

The middle path represents the distinct perspective and way of Buddhist practice more common to humanism than to other religions. Buddhism lays great emphasis on human thought and action and their relationship to the environment, society and culture. It is concerned with the relationship between the changing conditions of the environment, society and culture and the thoughts and actions of the individual and groups and the relationship between these thoughts and actions and their consequences. It is an investigation into causality.

Through this investigation, the Buddha came to offer two main characteristics of the middle path: the teaching of Dependent Origination and the Noble Eightfold Path. Dependent Origination shows the process of causality, how phenomena and situations arise and pass away based upon myriad causes and conditions. The Noble Eightfold Path shows the way of practice as a response to Dependent Origination.

"The Tathagatha avoids the two extremes
and talks about the Middle Path.
When this is, that is; with the arising of this, that arises.
Through ignorance volitional actions or karmic formations are conditioned.

Through birth, decay, death, lamentation, pain are conditioned.
When this is not, that is not; with the ceasing of this, that ceases.
Through the complete cessation of ignorance, volitional activities or karmic formations cease. 
Through the cessation of birth, death, decay, sorrow, cease."

(Samyuktagama, Chapter 12)