Buddhism in the Balance: Right Thoughts, Right Action
The wisest person has the mind of a child: always open, always learning. Of course, there are also many types of wisdom that accrue with age, so the perfect balance is just that: a perfect balance. And that’s the hardest part, of course, walking that fine line between two opposite extremes, in order to find that sweet spot that ultimately transcends them both. But that’s what Buddhism is all about, first and foremost, in its highest mode of being, the Middle Path, central to its foundation.
Meditation is the paradigm of that open child-like mind, to the point that even thoughts should be scared to show their silly faces there, begging for attention and generally making a nuisance of themselves. But I’m being generous on the subject of thoughts and thinking. Many Buddhists, but especially ‘non-dualists’, reject all thought as being of little use and no more than a distraction. But the Buddha promoted ‘right thought’, i.e. good thoughts, and I totally agree with that.
It’s disturbing that many ‘spiritual’ people are so ready to ‘throw out the baby with the bathwater,’ so to speak, assuming that if our evil thoughts cause so many problems, then all thoughts must be evil. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. Thoughts have revolutionized the course of human history and propelled us into an era largely peaceful and progressive, at least compared to what came before. You don’t have to study much history before you realize that no matter how bad things are now, they’ve been much worse before. Walk that fine line between innocence and experience for the highest wisdom.
One of the first glimpses of consciousness—self-consciousness—for any self-respecting member of angst-ridden rebellious existential youth is that, “life has no meaning.” And apparently that is a rite of passage from adolescence into adulthood, as palpable as puberty, as awkward as rolled-up jeans, as unforgiving as suicide–or so I hear…
streaming consciousness... 
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