Another way to understand the teachings of the Buddha as the Middle Path is to understand that the teachings avoid certain philosophical extremes. One extreme states that the world of sense experiences, the world of presentation, of seeing and hearing and tasting, is real and solid. This view seduces us into repeatedly trying to find the singular experience that will give us unchanging happiness. What we have matters a lot from this perspective, and we continue to chase objects or people and try to hold on to them. Especially in a culture of relative freedom and plenty, one can easily become an "experience junkie," ardently trying to experience more and more and have more and more. It is useful to spend some time reflecting on this tendency and whatever role it may have played in your life. Think of the ways you have sought perfect happiness through holding on to someone or something, and the repercussions of that.
The opposite extreme view is a type of nihilism, where we feel that nothing at all matters - everything is empty, fleeting, ephemeral - and we are disconnected and disempowered. Life is seen as meaningless, with no appropriate repository for our faith and no appropriate inspiration for our endeavors. We then overlook the truth that our actions have consequences. We forget that we can and must make effort toward our own release from suffering, and effort toward the release of all beings from suffering. If you have held this nihilistic view at some point in your life, consider the effect it had on your experience of connectedness, empathy, and goodwill. Rather than dwell in this dispirited hopelessness, begin to do metta, compassion, or sympathetic joy meditation. Observe whatever changes arise in your mind.
The Middle Way avoids the extremes of these two views of materialism and nihilism. Difficult to depict in words, the view of the Middle Way is sometimes best evoked in images, as when the Buddha described life as being like an echo, like a rainbow, like a flash of lightning in a summer's sky, like a phantom, like a dream. The whole world of presentation arises - we see, hear, feel, and so on - and it is also true that nothing lasts, nothing is reliable, nothing has inherent solid experience.
If we fall into the first extreme view, we will be lost in clinging. If we fall into the second extreme view, we will be lost in complacency or despair. If we rest in the Middle Way, then our actions will reflect an understanding of both the consequential nature of our behavior and the dream-like nature of our lives.
Generosity is primary among the actions of the Middle Way. It allows us to develop the qualities both of non-clinging and of non-complacency. Generosity is the mind's gesture recognizing both that there is nothing solid for us to hold on to and that our actions are meaningful. You can enhance the practice of generosity by observing those moments when the thought of giving does arise and you resist it. Feel the nature of the resistance - paint a word picture of it. Do you experience it as contradiction, rigidity, fearfulness? Explore it.
Then examine the impulse to give. What is the sense of yielding, letting go, and sharing? How would you describe the nature of the generous intention? Do you notice the release from grasping, the recognition that happiness will not come from holding on and clinging?
If carrying through with the impulse to give a particular object will not create a hardship for yourself and others, see if you can gently drop the resistance and actually offer the object. Even if your motive is a bit mixed, try to stay in touch with all aspects of the action and go on to give the gift. Observe your own mind, and especially follow the thread of feelings resulting from those moments of genuinely letting go and being generous.
Remember that the gift itself need not be glorious, but that giving is a way of stating our interconnectedness. If we undertake generosity as a practice, it will continue to grow ever more powerful. I often think of the quintessential instruction given by Neem Karoli Baba: "Love people and feed them." For people who took this to heart, it proved to be an important spiritual path.
In our time, with prevalent conditioning of self-judgment, it seems important to specifically remember ourselves in our extension of generosity. Giving to others solely motivated by a conviction of our own unworthiness will not tap into the true potential that generosity has to offer us as a vehicle for happiness. The equanimity practice is an important balance for the practice of generosity, so that we are opening, offering, and recognizing present limitations all at the same time. We practice generosity in the context of all four of the brahma-viharas, so that generosity becomes a powerful and expanding expression of the Middle Way.
- Sharon Salzberg
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