Modern Buddhism: Life in the Slow Lane of the Meandering Middle Path
Human aggression, arrogance, and greed aren’t solved by more of the same, but by dialog and reconciliation, of opposites. This is another use of the famous Middle Path, and possibly more important than the more personal and subjective one between luxury and poverty, or smartphones and meditation. Because this one also predicts the rise of the Buddhist Mahayana school and its social orientation over the personal, and it even predicts the Hegelian dialectic to come some thousands of years later.
It also shows the indirect approach to Buddhist teaching, without commandments or strict requirements, but only a handful of prohibitions against the most onerous behavior, with only some general guidelines besides that. Buddhim isn’t too concerned about blood lines or caste restrictions, simply the overriding need for polite and appropriate behavior and the avoidance of extremes. For better or worse, most Buddhists are willing to let Karmic retribution take care of anything that the local courts can’t handle.
And that’s probably the best approach, as long as the ‘multiple feedback loops of karma’ don’t make you lose any sleep at night, wondering if those checks have cleared and whether balances have been ‘zeroed’, haha, ‘shunyata’ emptiness joke. But that’s probably appropriate, too. It is not Buddhism’s job to pay your bills nor collect your debts. But regardless of your Buddhist ‘school’, the simple kindness that the Dalai Lama mentioned forty years ago is probably the best focus of your practice, or ‘lovingkindness’, if you prefer. The rest is simple life, life in the slow lane, chopping wood and carrying water…
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