03 August 2011

The "Middle" in the Middle Way?

While reading the chapter on Mahākassapa in Great Disciples of the Buddha recently, I came across a line that gave me some pause:
The true Middle Way is not a comfortable highway built out of easy compromises, but a lonely, steep ascent, which requires the renunciation of craving and the ability to endure hardship and discomfort.
It gave me pause, because I was immediately thrown back into the "what's so 'middle' about the Middle Way?" thicket.  How to understand the language of "renunciation" and "hardship and discomfort" in the same sentence with "the true Middle Way"?

If someone were to ask me about it today, I think I'd say something like this:  The Middle Way is the path that emerges when one gives up grasping and rejecting, when one stops aiming at either permanence or annihilation.  Seen like this, it's clear that the renunciation of craving is involved, because all craving tends toward either permanence or annihilation.  Seen like this, it's clear that hardship and discomfort are part of the picture, since, our habitual response to the world being one of craving, having done with craving is going to bristle and sting and chafe and ache. 

The measure of the middle in the Middle Way is not at all how it feels.  The measure of the middle in the Middle Way is the degree to which one becomes more and more able to navigate the world of birth-and-death with loving-kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity.  And all of that is compatible with a whole heap of ego-discomfort.  In fact, how could it not be, the ego being what it is?

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