The Middle Path     

Yin & Yang are what happens when activity comes from - Wu 

Wu, is the void where Yin & Yang come from. 

Buddha's prescription for the cure for suffering is - to walk the middle path.

The central head is the mask of eternity - this is the mask of God.  That is the metaphor through which eternity is to be experienced as a radiance .  (These other 2 figures)  Whenever one moves out of the transcendent one comes into a field of opposites.  These 2 pairs of opposites come forth as male and female from the two sides.  One has eaten of the tree of the knowledge, not only of good and evil, but of male and female, of right and wrong, of this and that, and light and dark.  Everything in the field of time is dual.  The past and future, dead and alive, all this; being and non-being, is - isn't. 

The mask represents the middle and the 2 represent the 2 opposites, and they always come in pairs.  Put your mind in the middle.  Most of us put our mind on the side of the good against what we think of as evil.  It was Heraclitus I think that said for God all things are good and right and just, but for man some things are right and others are not.  You're in the field of time when you're man, and one of the problems of life is to live in the realization of both terms.  That is to say I know the centre and I know that good and evil are simply temporal aberritions. 

The perfect way is only difficult for those who pick and choose. Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear. Make a hairbreadth difference and heaven and earth are set apart; if you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between “for” and “against” is the mind’s worst disease.

Keep in the middle … Buddha developed his whole technique of meditation on this sutra. His path is known as majjhim nikai – the middle path. Buddha says, “Remain always in the middle – in everything.”

… Japanese temple in Nara of the Buddha Mahavairochana.  The approach from the south is guarded by an imposing gate, with a guardian standing at either side in the form of a large wooden statue, twenty-six-and-a-half-feet high.  The statues stand in threatening attitude, bearing weapons.  The mouth of one is open, the mouth of the other is closed.  Their look is frightening. …  They are the counterparts, in the Buddhist mythic image, of the cherubim placed by Yahweh at the gate of Eden to guard “the way to the tree of life.”  I recall seeing in a New York newspaper, during the war with Japan, a picture of one of these imposing images, with a caption that read: “The Japanese worship gods like this” – a piece of information, no doubt derived from what in journalese is known as a “reliable source,” and published, of course, with high regard for the American public’s “right to know.”  But I had a wicked, uncooperative thought.  “No,” I thought, “not they but we!  It is we who worship a god like that.”  For in the Buddhist world the worshiper is instructed to walk right between those two gate guardians and approach the tree without fear; whereas, as told in the Book of Genesis, our own Lord God put his cherubim there to keep the whole human race out.  The Buddha sits with his right hand raised in the “fear not” posture and his left in that of “boon bestowing.”  One is not to be intimidated by the death threat of those guardians, but to cast aside the fear of death and come through to the knowledge of one’s own Buddhahood – or, as that though would be rephrased, in biblical terms: one’s own Godhood, as Yahweh himself recognized when, in Genesis 3:22, he expressed the fear to his angels that man might “become like one of us … take of the fruit, and eat, and live forever.”  TMD 203

As long as we’re hanging on to the ego, and fear, and desire – hanging on to our own personal problems – we’re not hearing the voice of the universe.  So, relax.  I’m reminded of a picture showing the figure of Death playing the violin to the artist.  Let Death talk to you and you break out of your ego pride.  That means you’ve got to put your head in the mouth of the lion.  Face the real experience of today.  Don’t reread it in terms of past experiences.  TMTT 204