Unminding mind, keep in the middle – until.
- The mind is a pendulum — it can only move from extreme to extreme. Indulgence generates renunciation, anger generates repentance, love generates hate. This is a law, not a miracle. Prince Shrown: profligate prince → extreme naked ascetic (one meal on alternate days, burning sun, no tree shade) — predictable, not miraculous. Buddha: ‘I have not done anything. This is how mind works.’
- The extreme fascinates the mind precisely because the middle = the mind’s death. At an extreme the pendulum gathers momentum to swing back; stopped dead-center it loses all momentum and stops entirely. Mind seeks extremes to survive.
- The instruction: whenever you find yourself at one extreme, do not swing to the opposite. After anger, do not repent — do not move. Say: ‘I have been angry; this is how I am.’ Stay with it. If you repent, you gather momentum for the next anger. If you do not repent, the energy has nowhere to go.
- ‘Until’ = the destination: keep in the middle UNTIL there is no mind. Middle = no-mind. Not a session technique but a lifelong continuous awareness: ‘doing, walking, eating, in relationship, everywhere — remain in the middle.’ Even approximate attempts begin building a quiet, tranquil center.
- Sitar analogy (Buddha to Shrown): strings too loose — no music; too tight — no music; only exact middle = music. ‘Only a master can set these strings right.’ To renounce or to indulge is easy; staying exactly in the middle is mastery.
- Once you stumble upon the exact middle point, you can never forget it again — because it is beyond mind.
- From Q&A: the true polar opposite of worldly life is not monasticism but death (suicide-preachers like Ajit Kesh Kambal were the real ‘other extreme’ in Buddha’s time). Sannyas is the middle between life and death: neither attachment to life nor repulsion from it. Choice itself is the root of misery — choosing life automatically includes death; choosing love includes hate. The middle = non-choice = choicelessness = ‘Do not choose. Just be.’
- From Q&A: for those still caught in mind-polarity (lovers, for instance), be fully authentic — authentically angry, authentically loving — rather than suppressing. Suppressing anger makes love impotent: hate and love are two poles of one phenomenon; cut one and the other dies. A repressed mind never experiences the polarity deeply enough to become weary of it, and so never truly moves beyond. ‘Be real and suffer reality. Suffering is a discipline.’ Authentic suffering of the full swing eventually creates genuine weariness of the pendulum — only then can you choose to step beyond the mind.