I heard Adama talk about the middle way.
A professor suggested the middle way should be applied to Buddhism itself.
Not taking precepts too seriously, alcohol now and again, not meditating too much, etc.
That's not the middle way, by the way.
That's the half way.
That's quite different.
quite different.
There is no halfway.
Halfway is pointless, useless.
You can think about it.
If something is the right thing to do and brings benefit,
Well, you might say that you have to pace yourself, but if alcohol is wrong, what good could come of indulging in it once in a while?
I think the...
The intention here is good.
The idea of not pushing yourself too hard.
For example, forcing something on you.
If you meditate too much without proper appreciation of the meditation practice, if you don't really want to meditate,
Meditating a lot is only so beneficial if you're not really interested in doing something.
It's not really so beneficial.
So sometimes it's good to appreciate things before you engage in them.
Simply pushing yourself is
is not of great benefit.
Sometimes you want to explore the reasons for doing things and the reasons for giving up things.
For example, some people have claimed beneficial results from getting drunk or drinking alcohol in the sense that, as meditators, it helps them realize how ridiculous it is to drink alcohol.
If they were to just blindly accept the precept, then they wouldn't really understand why it's awful.
the theory.
And so the intention, the idea that somehow one should not blindly race ahead into keeping all of these rules or becoming a monk or doing intensive meditation, I think the intention there is a good one.
But the
The problem is it's a conflation of this with another concept and that is of regression or
Yeah, the degradation of the mind.
Because every time you drink alcohol you degrade your state of mind, your awareness, your clarity of mind.
A meditator, someone who is serious in meditation will be revolted at the very thought of drinking alcohol.
So the idea that the middle way could somehow be alcohol now and then is absurd to such a person.
Any alcohol whatsoever is just a revolting thought.
One's whole being revolts against the idea.
Killing, stealing, lying, cheating, drugs and alcohol.
have been totally given up, 100%.
So the middle way is not halfway.
And in those senses, some people who will say, I've heard one man say engaging in tantric sex really helped him to come to terms with sexuality.
And I would say I thought about that for quite a while And it's a little bit difficult to refute Even though deep down you know There's something wrong with that And what's wrong with it
is that at the moment of indulging in sexuality you're cultivating attachment to pleasure and addiction and so on.
You're cultivating these pleasurable states.
You're encouraging them.
And that has an effect on the mind.
It deteriorates the state of mind.
So what helps in the dealing with sexuality is the
objective observation of the sexual urge when it arises, the sexual urge, the pleasurable sensations and so on, the physical stimulus.
But the actual intention to engage in, for example, tantric sex or sex in general, is going to degrade one's state of mind.
And the cultivation of the desires and the passion actually hurts one's clarity.
And if one is truly mindful, one can't engage in it.
One can't give rise to sexual urges as being mindful.
This is what you see when you start to be mindful.
as soon as you cultivate clear awareness, the urge disappears.
Suddenly it's no longer, because this is what I mean by saying you can fundamentally misunderstand reality, or mis-experience, or mis-interpret reality.
And all it takes is a moment of clarity for you to see things suddenly like a veil was lifted from your eyes.
And so, for example, this sexuality and the example of drugs and alcohol as well, they cannot be indulged in by someone who is truly mindful.
The middle way is
It's quite different from a halfway, taking things halfway.
It's totally, totally different.
It's actually, and I've talked about this before, it's actually not really, the concept of being in the middle is not really a core doctrine, in the sense that it's not something that the Buddha
insisted upon or reiterated frequently.
It's not something that the Buddha taught on a very frequent basis.
It happens to be quite famous because it was the first discourse.
One important point that you have to keep in mind is the Buddha's audience at the time.
He was dealing with people who were torturing themselves, who were doing something that was
was leading them to an extreme state.
And so he framed his teaching on the Four Noble Truths, which he couldn't just go into teaching the Four Noble Truths right away.
They weren't in a position to appreciate the path that he was going to explain until he pointed out that the state that they were in was an extreme state.
So the middle way, well first of all just this, is that it was specifically directed towards these five ascetics and towards adjusting their minds because they were not like any of us.
They were totally extreme.
They were hardcore ascetics, you know, torturing themselves, not eating and so on.
And so the Buddha was explaining that this was an extreme to them.
And then going into what was the more important Buddhist doctrine, that everything that arises ceases, that there is no happiness to be found in...
in the objects of experience, that it is all dukkha, it's all suffering, that the first noble truth is to see and to experience things as they are and to give them up.
Now, what it means, the middle way, is quite clear.
It's the avoiding of two states, and that is indulgence and repression, or rather than repression, because that's a Western word, you might say...
rejection because this is really what asceticism was all about it was the rejection of what they saw as an extreme state the state of hedonism of sensual indulgence which totally corrupts the mind so they thought well if that corrupts the mind then you have to go to the other way
And beat it out of yourself, torture yourself.
If happiness and pleasure is what leads to defilement, then the opposite, torture, must be what leads to enlightenment.
Actually intentionally causing suffering on yourself.
The middle way is the avoidance of both of these things.
Or in a Western sense, the avoidance of indulgence and repression.
Not indulging in things, but not repressing them.
Simply experiencing them for what they are is the best way to understand the middle way.
now the practice of the middle way we only get to the middle way when we are totally extreme in our practice in the sense of practicing to the utmost degree so
Getting to the point where everything is practice, where every moment of our waking life or every moment of our lives, day and night, is meditative, is the cultivation of clear awareness.
That's what leads to enlightenment.
And so it's actually quite extreme.
It's not a halfway moderate path.
It's the middle way.
Which is a very powerful, it's the eightfold noble way.
The middle way is that way.
It has to do with our reaction and our interaction with experience.
That's what is meant by the middle way, not a lifestyle.
It has nothing to do with a lifestyle.
We should pick the lifestyle which allows us to give up everything but this reaction to experience.
And so you can see how ridiculous it would be to say alcohol in moderation because it's totally inapplicable.
The middle way has nothing to do with drinking alcohol or not drinking alcohol.
It has to do with the experience of reality which
is obviously hindered by the taking of alcohol.
It's just a misunderstanding because people tend to intellectualize Buddhism and try to incorporate it into their own delusions and their own lives which are very much caught up in samsara as opposed to trying to become free from samsara.