The Middle Way

I've always thought that coming to the middle way from asceticism must be very different from coming to the middle way from hedonism. Coming from hedonism, the middle way might be indistinguishable from asceticism. 

The middle way is specific to the space between asceticism and hedonism. It rose out of the Buddha's nearly dying from asceticism. He turned to meditation, and found the way.

There are many things you could deprive yourself of in asceticism. Food is one. Sleep is another. The goal is to train oneself to not be reactive. Today I tried to not eat, though I drank water and coffee. I buckled after 16 hours, 8 hours short of 24 hours. 

Reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari he discusses the ancestral past. He is careful to point out that there is little known and that speculation is more about what we think than what happened. But he talks about in the past you would come upon a fig tree, full of fruit. You'd better eat as much as you can before the monkeys get it. You're unlikely to be able to store or come back to it.

The ancestral past would not have been about materialism because moving often would curb that. And there was little if any food storage. Maybe. So you gorged when you had the chance. (Agriculture flattened out the variety, and meant more work.) Humans are prone to gorging. When there is abundance, like there is in modern society, there becomes the problem of obesity. When you're young you can eat all you want and not gain. But the decades pass by and I find myself a big pile of mushy goo. Fasting is seen as the way to counter this. Surely we had lot of fasting in our ancestral past. 

In The Millionaire Next Door, the author points out that immigrants have an easier path towards living below their means and investing the surplus. Surprisingly Native Americans have more millionaires by percentage of population. The stereotype is a poor reservation. The poverty allows for living below your means. 

Chipping away at one's quality of life isn't easy or a fun project. It's like celibacy, it's not often talked about. Celibacy is just another form of depriving oneself, not reacting to the game of grasping at pleasure and pushing away pain. What would be the point of it, there must be some gains to doing such a project. 

Just as a lying politician can promise things s/he doesn't come through on, the individual wishes for more control about the world, but finds herself or himself coming up short. We are puny. Controlling yourself is an unattractive project, but it might be the thing you can get the most control over. Materialism says you can have it all, just buy things. The happiness movement says you deserve to be happy. We are relentlessly seeking to improve, get more. 

Spiritual materialism is when we go see all the famous teachers. Retreats at amazing retreat centers. The upper middle way is joked about. 

The image of men smashing their heads in The Holy Grail is funny. You don't hear much about finding hidden hairshirts on people these days. Asceticism has gone out of style. There are still monastics, though the numbers are decreasing. Buddhist communities are moving into unused Christian communities in the west as 200 years of exposure to this eastern religion take root.

There are many cautions about being too willful, and the parable of the lute strings. Asceticism is seen as an adolescent defense against wanting things in modern psychology. I can hear Donna Meagle and Tommy Haverford on Parks and Recreation saying, "treat yourself."

Then there are stories to the contrary. Charlie Parker practicing his saxophone 11-14 hours a day. One of the defining traits of Kobe Bryant was his working hard in the weight room. Bobby Sands hunger strike. I know some monks who were forest monks for 5 years. Ajahn Mun is one of my heroes, he was tough Forest Monk. There are also bodhisattvas like Samantha Powers who devote their life to trying to decrease genocides in the world.  

So this was just an exploration of asceticism, the middle way and hedonism. I am pushing myself to be more ascetic, which really is moving more towards the middle way.

I've been thinking that the protestant work ethic can be quite ascetic, and that having children can be quite self abnegating. Even Hillary Clinton complained about how boring it was to raise a child.