Speaker 1: Hey everybody, it's Eric from the one You Feed Back
Speaker 1: with another mini episode. Before we get started, I just
Speaker 1: want to encourage you to support the many episodes and
Speaker 1: you can get a extra free mini episode every month
Speaker 1: for being a supporter of the show. Go to one
Speaker 1: You feed dot net slash support. And now onto this
Speaker 1: mini episode, which is going to be about the middle
Speaker 1: way where the Buddha found a middle ground between the
Speaker 1: extreme comfort of his youth and the ascetic practices that
Speaker 1: he fell into. So the myth is or the story
Speaker 1: as the Buddha grew up in a in a kingdom.
Speaker 1: He was extraordinarily rich, had every material comfort in the world.
Speaker 1: He saw real examples of suffering which made him want
Speaker 1: to go out and discover the truth. So he went out,
Speaker 1: left the kingdom, left his wife and kid behind, and
Speaker 1: then started getting into these very rigorous spiritual practices where
Speaker 1: he denied himself food and all the different things that
Speaker 1: that we think of as extreme spiritual practices. And ultimately
Speaker 1: what he found was it was the middle way for
Speaker 1: him that allowed him to find enlightenment, not extreme comfort
Speaker 1: and not extreme deprivation. So that's the middle way from
Speaker 1: a Buddhist perspective. And I have found the middle way
Speaker 1: to be possibly the wisest thing I've gotten out of Buddhism.
Speaker 1: There are so many examples of where we can use
Speaker 1: the middle way to be helpful. The other thing is
Speaker 1: that it didn't just come from the Buddha, that that's
Speaker 1: where I first found it, but it appears in lots
Speaker 1: of different things. Very notably, Aristotle had the idea of
Speaker 1: the golden mean, which was every virtue is a is
Speaker 1: a mean between two extremes, each of which is a vice.
Speaker 1: So basically, any characteristic you like, if you take it
Speaker 1: too far on one end, it becomes a vice. So
Speaker 1: Greg Marcus, who we had recently talked about this about
Speaker 1: how take courage, for example, if you take courage too
Speaker 1: far becomes recklessness. If you go if you don't have
Speaker 1: enough courage, then it becomes fear. And so what you
Speaker 1: want to find is the middle way between those character traits.
Speaker 1: And I think that applies to nearly any character trait
Speaker 1: we have, particularly ones that are are strong within as
Speaker 1: I have found for me that they can be both
Speaker 1: a blessing and a curse, and I need to search
Speaker 1: for the middle way. But there are so many other
Speaker 1: examples of the middle way. And one of the things
Speaker 1: I ask on the show often is about how do
Speaker 1: people negotiate be tween or you know, in the middle
Speaker 1: between letting their emotions run their life and so I
Speaker 1: feel any emotion and it takes me over and on
Speaker 1: the opposite extreme, repressing an emotion. How do I find
Speaker 1: the middle ground between those two where I give those
Speaker 1: emotions a place to work, a place to do their thing,
Speaker 1: and yet I don't go too far either direction. We
Speaker 1: often talk about being too hard on ourselves. This is
Speaker 1: the same thing. How do I find the middle ground
Speaker 1: between being too easy, letting myself off the hook for everything,
Speaker 1: and the opposite, which is being too hard on myself?
Speaker 1: How do I find the middle ground there? And so
Speaker 1: very often as I'm looking at anything in life and
Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure out the path forward, I try
Speaker 1: and look too well, what is what is the middle way?
Speaker 1: What is another option? I think that's another way to
Speaker 1: to think about it. Is there another option here that
Speaker 1: I'm not thinking of? We tend to think very dualistically.
Speaker 1: We tend to think, um, either I do this or
Speaker 1: I don't do it. And a lot of times there's
Speaker 1: a there's a ground in between, and decision making studies
Speaker 1: show that if we take time to think about that
Speaker 1: third option, So if we can take it out of
Speaker 1: it's this or that and introduce some other options, the
Speaker 1: skill and the quality of decisions jumps a huge amount
Speaker 1: simply by looking at what could be in the middle
Speaker 1: of the middle way. Another in relationships, this can be
Speaker 1: very helpful. We tend to get into trouble and relationships
Speaker 1: when we use words like always and never. You always
Speaker 1: do this, you never knew that those are usually not
Speaker 1: the case, right. The truth is somewhere in between those.
Speaker 1: It's more of a middle ground. And if we can
Speaker 1: find that middle ground and we can communicate from it,
Speaker 1: it makes our communication and our relationships so much stronger.
Speaker 1: So that's just a few examples. I think I'll be
Speaker 1: talking more about the middle way as we go on
Speaker 1: this year, because I've really been keyed into it lately
Speaker 1: and thinking a lot about it. But that's some examples
Speaker 1: of where you could apply the middle way in your
Speaker 1: life and it might be helpful to use. So thanks
Speaker 1: so much for listening. As always, that's the end of
Speaker 1: this mini episode, but we will be back sometime with
Speaker 1: another one. And if you want one every month. As
Speaker 1: I mentioned, people who donate to the show getting mini
Speaker 1: episode every month when you feed dot net slash support
Speaker 1: and uh. I'll also release another one of these for
Speaker 1: everyone soon. Take care, talk to you soon. Bye.