The Buddha by Mukunda Rao

Author:Mukunda Rao
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: null
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2017-12-05T05:00:00+00:00

Is There a Middle Path?

The Middle Path suggests that both self-mortification and self-indulgence are not skilful ways of sadhana, for both extremities could irreversibly damage the sensitivity of the body-mind and strengthen the ego of an individual.

Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. What are the two? There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is unworthy and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy and unprofitable.

Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathagata has realized the Middle Path; it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to nirvana.1

But this wise counsel may begin to sound like middle-class morality: don’t indulge in extremities of any kind, strike a balance, play safe and take good care of yourself! It may not appeal to many a spiritual seeker who wants to explore and experiment and find things out for herself. To think that you should strike a balance and follow a middle path in your spiritual journey may be a compromise, and that is not the best way to do spirituality.

You simply have to do what you have to do, and what is to be done will be different for each person. After all, that is what the Buddha himself did (remember the last phase of his sadhana when he almost starved himself to death), although the Pali canon finally has the Buddha endorse the Middle Path and claim that he could attain nirvana by scrupulously following this path and the noble eightfold path in particular.

However, philosophically, the Middle Path is a significant viewpoint and has far-reaching epistemological and ethical implications. As T.R.V. Murti argues, it is neither a neutral nor a ‘third position lying midway between the two extremes, but a no-position that supersedes them both’.2 It simply means we cannot assert that something is, or isn’t, with any certainty. This path avoids absolute positions or the one-sidedness of perspective that takes any polarity as objective reality.

So, steering clear of eternalism (sasvatavada or the belief in atman) and nihilism (ucchedavada or the denial of continuity), rejecting both the affirmative and the negative views, the Madhyamikas maintained that there simply is no duality; there is only advaya, unity. This view is derived from their philosophical position that all things have dependent origination (pratitya-samutpada) and, therefore, all things are empty.

Now, before we discuss the notions of pratitya-samutpada and sunyata, it is imperative that we first consider the question of morality and the related noble eightfold path.

CAN MORALITY CHANGE PEOPLE?

The solemn promise to engage in or refrain from a certain thought or action in order to achieve a specified goal has never worked. To be specific, religious morality or moral teaching, or even the ‘secular’ ethical principles (shaped by political ideologies, which in turn were derived from religious moral vision) have been unsuccessful in achieving their intended goals. If they had succeeded, the world would not have been what it is today.

Morality may control human nature to some extent and for sometime, but it can never change it.

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