The Lighter Path

Balance Point

Being here means we are aware. Being aware means we know where our balancing area is or we are in the process of developing a balancing point. Most of us are always in the process of developing a balance point. Our balance point is not a place in space/time. It is a platform of balance that changes in dimensions depending on the field of interaction. In fact I would argue that there is nothing else but the process of finding a balance point on a continuous basis. The balance point, like everything else, keeps moving in a fluid dance. We become and maintain awareness of the motion of all things. Static is not life. Those that claim they have achieved some permanent balance point are posturing and posing for the rest of us, continuing to live in illusion and delusion.Those of us who expect that from others, to be in a permanent balance point, are living on the other side of the same coin.

Energy

We only have so much energy to utilize everyday. So many of us are working hard to maintain our energy levels through equanamity, nutrition, and exercise. Another type of energy is a little harder to maintain. it’s connected to the body physically but is different. That is the energy of our thought and emotional structure. We need to maintain energy in our thinking, emotional, and spiritual mind. When we lose our minds energy we unbalance and become static or reactive. To optimize our energy levels and our ability to respond to life’s challenges we need to maintain our balance. In Buddhist terms remain aware of and engaged with the middle path. To maintain mind energy it’s important to avoid living in the future and past where much of our ability to engage gets lost in stories. Stories are draining. They rarely have the ability to generate energy and only drain what we have. We place  much of our energy in our stories about what never was and never will be.

Tight Rope and Zen

Let’s visualize that life is very much a like walking on a tight rope. We have the wire and that is like any path we may be on. Constantly swaying and moving. Much like life is always swaying, moving, and rolling.  Life is not static,  it’s constantly moving and very challenging to remain engaged with while remaining in balance. We have our staff to help maintain balance but it can also throw us off of our balance point. The staff represents our senses and ability to interpret what we experience. Balance is thrown off whenever we decide we desire something enough to attach it to the ends of our staff. Remember that our quality of life depends on being smoothly in balance. The objective is to keep balancing, Avoid attaching things to staff that weight us down one way or the other. Our environment, conditioned ego, and inherent needs, will all call to us. They will convince us to add to the staff. As we add things, even things that supposedly balance out or distribute evenly, the struggle (suffering) to stay in balance increases and energy is being expended in order to keep us in the center. We avoid clinging to anything. Clinging represents overloading the staff, overloading that enables struggling and suffering.

Touching Lightly

This is not to say that we don’t experience life out of balance. Being out of balance is life. Think about that. Life is the experience of being out of balance, not in balance. Those who think differently suffer because they want a static experience. They believe life is all about being secure and safe.  They grab onto as much shit as possible in every way possible because they equate having with status and safety. . Never seeing that life is about living in insecurity. They don’t want a wire, they want a sidewalk.

So, we don’t attach things to the staff, we touch them lightly, compassionately, with wisdom, with joy or sorrow (or both) and them let go on their way. The staff is not an attachment, it is our sense structure. If we are aware and use our sense structure to gently touch and experience those things in our environment, we can maintain our balance, enjoy those things in our environment, and move on. We can both lightly touch them with all the intensity we can bring to the experience and then move on. We stay in balance, we keep our energy, we optimize our experience.

It is helpful this path of little holding and  touching everything with compassion.

I value comments and perspectives.

Be well.

Gassho.

Bryan Wagner