What is the Middle Path - a Path of Moderation

The Middle Way, also known as the Middle or Median Way, is a balanced approach to life. It lies between the search for an excessive perfectionism and the laissez-faire or total lack of temperance. It is a certain mastery of Life which can be applied in many areas and reminds us that if one is to avoid the worst, one must also, as the saying goes, remember that "the best is The enemy of good. " What is the Median Way? Explanations

What is the Middle Way?

What is the Middle Way

The story goes that Siddharta Gautama was a Prince who lived in opulence and in a protected environment. He had never seen illness, suffering, misery and death. One day he went out of his palace and discovered the suffering. He decided to leave everything he had to go to meditate until he found enlightenment: he thought that to attain enlightenment he had to live like a sleepless ascetic and almost without food. After the physical collapse, Gautama the Buddha understood that happiness did not reside either in excessive opulence (luxuriousness) or in total asceticism (self-denial, self-mortification) but in the middle path.

The Median Way, or Middle Way, is a path that avoid extremes. It leads to the liberation of suffering and awakening. This discovery was taken up by the teachings of the Buddha and especially that which refers to the Noble Way Eight-fold.

The Noble Way Eight-fold

It is interesting to note that the teaching of the Middle Way then had much influence in the East, as in the West. It is found in the concept of  Buddha studies where each aspect is complementary and where equilibrium brings fullness. For example, between boiling and frozen, which are extremes of warmth and cold, we can find an average temperature that is conducive to our bathing.

When we talk about the West, we could refer to some philosophers. For example, Aristotle uses the term "Middle Ground also known as Golden mean (philosophy)" and explains it thus: "The equal is intermediate between the excess and the defect". In his work entitled "Nicomachean Ethics," he later writes, "I call measure that which contains neither exaggeration nor defect."

We could associate this vision with the tarot card: Temperance. This is very interesting to illustrate many of the highlights of our lives.

Application of the Median Way to the Daily Life

A person who is totally oriented towards the material world or a person who has cut himself off from the world to devote himself solely to spirituality, are both in extremes. It is important, since we are incarnated beings not to deny the material world, but it is equally important to leave room for our spirituality.

The vision of body and mind can bring about the same reflection. We live in a society that promotes body worship (stay thin and young at all costs, exercise to be more muscular or cosmetic surgery because you want to modify certain parts of your body ...) Sometimes to the detriment of the mind. 

But the reverse is also possible. People who are attracted to spirituality sometimes imagine that they must neglect the body to devote themselves solely to spirituality, which is not the way to go either. It is possible to heal and embellish his body to feel good, but without excess, while having a spiritual life developed.

Alan Watts - What is the Middle Way  (source : Youtube)

Many wellness tips are provided and sometimes people dedicate themselves totally. For example, lending too much to our consumption, accumulating food supplements, plants and other capsules, refusing to eat anything other than organic, etc. can sometimes become excessive. It is not uncommon to see bad uses of capsules that lead to diseases that one wished to avoid at all costs. As for food, it is sometimes important to remember that it is necessary to "eat to live and not to live to eat" and not to take all commercial information literally.

The important thing is to feed our bodies in order to give them the energy they need. Sometimes, thinking to help and boost it with too many vitamins, we realize that we have exhausted it.

If the Buddha states that the release of suffering comes with the choice of the middle path, examples are certainly not lacking in our daily lives:

► What do you have to do with a multitude of friends on social networks, if you can have real and sincere that will always be there, in reality?

► Why spend to accumulate assets when you feel your closets are already too cluttered. Is there space in your home to circulate energy?

► Why seek perfectionism to excess that causes a waste of time and leaves you frustrated if you do not reach that perfection?

► Eating too much and without hunger and not eating enough: we clearly have the example of excesses in cases of bulimia and anorexia;

► Technology invades us, but it makes many services (administration, work, personal use): we can accept its benefits and use it with discernment without becoming a slave and buy a new tablet as soon as the market evolves (because the market Evolves to meet demand);

► Working is part of life. Again, the middle way is always preferable between the one who puts all his energy in the work to the detriment of his family, his friends, his well-being and the one who refuses to work because he is lazy.

We could have cited many other examples, but we advise you to do this little personal work in your lives and ask you, for every aspect of your daily life, whether you are in "too much" or "too little" and How to stay on the middle path. As the Buddha points out, "realization resides in practice," then, if you have understood the basic principles of the middle path, you only have to experiment it with profit!

To your blooming ...

Author : Jean Marc