#themiddleway

The Buddha explains how the "state" that lies at the root of ...spiritual anguish is...sensual desire (kama). It is not that [a person] fails to understand that sensual desire provides little gratification and often leads to much suffering...[b]ut because [a person] has no access to the kind of bliss experienced in deep states of meditative absorption, [this person] remains in thrall to the joys of sensual desire...Kama is closely identified with passion and sexual lust, with the primary, instinctive urge to survive and reproduce. The passage from the Shorter Discourse on the Mass of Suffering presents it as more deeply rooted in our neurobiology than the greed, hatred and confusion that periodically overwhelm us. Kama is what makes greed, hatred and confusion stick, linger, and fester in our minds...Gotama is well aware that people cannot be neatly divided into saints and sinners. In the account of his awakening in The Noble Quest he declares that what he has understood is difficult to grasp because it "goes against the stream" (patisotagami). To enter the stream of the eightfold path means to go against the stream of one's own reactivity, be that of one's instinctive drives, social conditioning, or psychological inclination. By choosing to think, speak and act otherwise than as prompted by these habits requires considerable resolve and commitment. For someone...who is taking the first steps along this new path, it is hardly surprising that [one] finds [oneself] feeling overwhelmed and battered by the power of those forces that surge within...This is understandable. If you start to confront your innate impulsivity instead of following its prompts and letting yourself get carried away, the act of resistance itself seems to intensify the power of the reactions. The ensuing sense of powerlessness and frustration can easily turn into self-loathing. You become furious with yourself, not only for not doing what you want but often for ending up doing the very opposite of what you want. AS this self-hatred grows and festers, it can mutate into the wish to harm and punish yourself for your weakness. While pointing out...the dangers inherent in sensual indulgence, Gotama also warns...against the temptation of self-punishment...The Buddha's vision of liberation, by contrast, entails cultivating a middle way: the individual does not get trapped in either the dead end of sensual indulgence or its opposite, self-punishment.

If conditioned arising was the e=mc2 of Gotama's vision, the eightfold path was his first move in translating that axiom from an abstract principle into a civilizing force. He presented the eightfold path as a middle way that avoids the dead ends of infatuation and mortification, both of which he dismissed as "uncivilized." A dead end is a path that goes nowhere; to pursue one is to keep banging my head against a wall. No matter how much energy I devote to indulging my appetites or punishing myself for my excesses, I keep coming back to the same place I started. One minute I am thrilled and excited by something, but in the next I am in a funk of self-doubt and boredom where nothing interests me. I veer between these two poles, going around and around in circles. Indulgence and mortification are dead ends in that they lead to an inner paralysis, which blocks the capacity to live abundantly.