Buddhism, the Four Poisons, and a Self with no Face… 

Jealousy is maybe more insidious even than greed, hate and delusion, because it has no face, just a false self reflected in thousands of tiny mirrors. And that self is the original conundrum, of course, between Buddhism, Jainism, and Hindu Brahmanism, the source of much contention and spirited debate. Because, when Buddhism crowned itself as the Middle Path between excesses of luxury and lack, it also defined itself as the Middle path between (Hindu) Brahmanism and Jainism, the one full of noise and ceremony, and the other full of silence and fasting—slowly. 

Buddhism famously split the difference, of course, advocating the mediation between extremes in some sort of dialectical approach that might easily resemble the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis that Hegel would elaborate more than two thousand years later. The beautiful part of this approach is that it not only avoids those pesky extremes, but it also provides a way forward in any ever-changing world in which the only certainty is negation. But that jealousy will fade when it has nothing to fall back on, no false identity or permanent traits which too often define a being in this life in this world.  

Because, in many opinions, that is all we have to buy or sell on the free market for souls in a world where matter in motion is the only alternative. This world is but a simulation of the real world, though, in which light is the only medium and love is the only exchange. You can grab it fast or you can make it last, and the balance between the two is even better. So, let’s make a shopping list for our Eightfold Path. Right thoughts, right words, and right action are more than the lyrics to a song by Franz Ferdinand. It’s a way of life.