VBT – Meditation 88.5
The Middle
Buddha’s middle path is based on this technique. It is beautiful. For so many reasons it is beautiful.
One: it is very scientific, because only between two can you balance. If there is only one point, imbalance is bound to be there. So Buddha says that those who are worldly are imbalanced, and those who have renounced are again imbalanced in the other extreme. A balanced man is one who is neither in this extreme nor that; he lives just in the middle. You cannot call him worldly, you cannot call him other-worldly. He is free to move; he is not attached to any. He has come to the midpoint, the golden mean.
Secondly: it is very easy to move to the other extreme – very easy. If you eat too much you can fast easily, but you cannot diet easily. If you talk too much you can go into silence very easily, but you cannot talk less. If you eat too much, it is very easy not to eat at all – this is another extreme. But to eat moderately, to come to a midpoint, is very difficult. To love a person is easy; to hate a person is easy. To be simply indifferent is very difficult. From one extreme you can move to the other.
To remain in the middle is very difficult. Why? Because in the middle you have to lose your mind.
Your mind exists in extremes. Mind means excess. Mind is always extremist: either you are for or you are against. You cannot be simply neutral. Mind cannot exist in neutrality: it can be here or there – because the mind needs the opposite. It needs to be opposed to something. If it is not opposed to anything it disappears. Then there is no functioning for it; it cannot function.
Try this. In any way, become neutral, indifferent – suddenly the mind has no function. If you are for, you can think; if you are against, you can think. If you are neither for nor against, what is left to think?
Buddha says that indifference is the basis of the middle path. UPEKSHA indifference – be indifferent to the extremes. Just try one thing: be indifferent to the extremes. A balancing happens.
This balancing will give you a new dimension of feeling where you are both the knower and the known, the world and the other world, this and that, the body and the mind. You are both, and simultaneously neither – above both. A triangle has come into existence.
You may have seen that many occult, secret societies have used the triangle as their symbol. The triangle is one of the oldest occult symbols just because of this – because the triangle has three angles. Ordinarily you have only two angles, the third is missing. It is not there yet, it has not evolved. The third angle is beyond both. Both belong to it, they are part of it, and still it is beyond and higher than both.
Tags: The Middle
