Bhagwan Buddha has talked about the middle path while his own life has been in extremes, how come this contradiction in his life?
The middle path is the outcome, the final result but the journey is in the extremes. When Buddha is talking about the middle path he is actually saying that you will be thrown into the middle path once you have travelled to both the extremes and have known them. This understanding may happen when you have experienced both extremes or if you are sufficiently aware you may get this understanding by observing others without going into them personally. When you go to one extreme till it exhausts, then you go towards the other extreme also and having experienced both extremes, you transcend both and go beyond, into your being.
People try to get rid of drinking, smoking, eating non-veg or any other of the habits, but how so ever they try, they are not able to get over them. Suppression does not help. But if this experiment is carried out in such cases with full awareness then gradually the very desire for them will reduce and finally vanish, for then it will be a matter of choice.
In history we have seen numerous examples of people going to one extreme and then all of a sudden they take a U turn to the other extreme. The cases of Valmiki, Angulimaal, Ashoka appear to be exceptions where they have turned from one extreme to the other. But normally this is not found, because when we move, we keep on moving in that direction only and we drift far from the other possibility.
True that normally we continue to go in one direction only but we never exhaust it and save some of it. If with complete awareness we go into this experiment of stretching a thing to its extreme then there will be a time when you can proceed no further and you collapse. And in your collapse your mind too collapses and what remains is your consciousness. From your personal identity you shift to the impersonal consciousness that is your being.
Exceptions are not there. I say that we call them exceptions only because we have not yet been able to lay our hands on the science of their functioning. Once we discover and understand the mechanism of such happenings we will no more call them exceptions. They happen when a set of conditions are met. We have yet to unfold this mystery.
The middle path does not mean that you will be something of this side and something of opposite side. No, it is not that. Middle path means now you cannot be forced into anything; you can choose now; you can be on one side, you can choose to be on the opposite side and you can choose to stay in the middle and you can also opt not to choose at all. All the options are open to you and the choice is yours. You are the master of the situation not the slave.
We see so many extremes in nature, like tsunami, floods, earthquakes, extreme weather, and so on that cause great devastation and become life threatening, yet nature is taken to be in existential harmony. We need to understand that extreme is a relative term. What you take as extreme is extreme only in relation to you. In the big canvas of life happenings, tsunami, earthquakes etc are but a simple ripple in the ocean, an insignificant happening. Existence has its own ways of rejuvenating itself in ways that appear extremities to you. Mountains, valleys, springs and lakes that you consider as beauty of nature may have been created by many of such extremities.
It is the same as you may casually be taking bath and in the process many small insects may be meeting their end in the current of water. Do you ever consider that as devastation? What is insignificant to you is most threatening to these mini creatures.
And then for creation, destruction is inevitable. How can there be a new life if there is no death? Everything is balanced in nature. Just because our life is threatened we think it is devastating and against creation. We need to see the total picture to be able to appreciate the happenings in nature.
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अद्भुत है.. ये समग्रता…. अहोभाव प्रभु ❣️🙏🏻🙏🏻
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Gurudev 🧡