Buddhism's Middle Path

An idea prevalent in Buddhism but not really popular in the West is the idea of the Middle Path. This may be because of the attitudes once exposed by Barry Goldwater that extremism in the pursuit of freedom is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue, but it also has to do with cultural difference where the religions of the West and East arose.

Yet, despite the vast cultural differences there is one Western idea that appeared on the temple of Delphi that can help clueless Westerners like myself understand the idea of the Middle Path, and that is "Nothing too much." Or as we better know the phrase today, "Everything in Moderation."

While using a film in which Keanu Reeves starred in my cause the rating of this article to go downwards, at least the film as far as I know got most of its facts right and included a nice story of how Buddha became to be the Buddha. The film called Seven Years in Tibet, at least like two of Keanu Reeve's other offerings does not feature the actor as a potential savior to mankind.

Ascetics were and in fact still are popular among India's Hindus. When the Buddha set out on the path of enlightenment he tired their methods to find a way to end human suffering. The general gist of the idea is that while the Buddha had many spiritual experiences as a result of the Buddhist practices, he found that in and of themselves they did not end suffering and only increased his discomfort. Because the founder of Buddhism began his life as a prince, we can only assume that he had already seen the dangers that the excess of the palace life had caused him. (Whether or not it is true that his parents tried to shelter him from seeing human suffering is debatable. It seems to me like it was added later to give the story more meaning.)

But the Buddha realized during this period that denying the needs of the body would not cause people to achieve happiness or enlightenment. Instead, he started to teach that suffering was brought about by desire and that denying the needs or the body or indeed, engaging its carnal pleasures would not help one break the reincarnation cycle.