There were a few people who were peripherally involved with both Ch'an and Zen study. They were perpetually undernourished and dressed nearly in rags. One told me, "It's what you got to do to get enlightenment." Some were stoned on drugs; most were making a serious quest.
In college I saw how some grad students and professors alike let excruciating workweeks wreck their health and marriages. I saw the same thing once I joined the work force: the toll that overwork can take on every edge of life.
At one contract job, I found a forty-something woman sleeping at her desk early one Friday morning; she had been working non-stop for three days to get a project done on time. I started past her desk when she roused. She scrambled to her feet and and started away. "I'll be back in a couple hours. I'm almost done, just a few more details... !" She wasn't back when I left that evening. I didn't see her until the following Monday; her eyes refused to meet mine. I never did learn what happened, but several days later her desk was vacant, stripped of her having been there.
Sometimes lives of radical deprivation or endless challenge do serve well; we're all unique. Most times, I believe that extreme routes of searching for happiness and fulfillment are like a locomotive racing toward derailment. A better route, I believe, follows the middle path through life's myriad theaters.
The middle path understands harmony
whose sense of symmetry and balance
strikes notes of beauty.
Balance bears a noble temperament
in accord with itself and its ideals.
It depends upon a steady heart where
the spirit's song is borne on the winds.
The blossoms and grace of harmony--
the heights of balance that sound the depths
and reach the summit of accord--
these gifts touch the secret soul.
Vigilant, curious, observant,
balance and harmony belong to whomever endures,
bringing mastery of the middle way.
With this mind set, joy comes.
With the sweetness of harmony and rapture of rhyme,
people flower as envies,
anxieties, and perplexities fade.
