4. Compassion…The Middle Path

by Dick Rauscher

Abstract

Middle path spirituality is defined simply as the ability to live life in the gray of paradox, ambiguity, uncertainty, and not knowing. A psychological place of emptiness where the love and compassion of Jesus, Buddha, and all the great spiritual teachers of history are encountered.

These spiritual teachers have invited us throughout human history to do no harm and embrace a middle path compassion by eliminating the social caste categories of "otherness" that are used to define who is included and who is excluded in our culture. They referred to these arbitrary social categories as illusions¹ and taught that all reality is simply a part of the Unity we call God. If these arbitrary categories we use to socially define ourselves are truly nothing but illusions and could therefore be eliminated from our thinking, then we could indeed learn to embrace the middle path spirituality of compassion that these spiritual teachers have been trying to teach us about.

Nobel prize winner and Buddhist peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh, once told an audience that

"if you want to eliminate the tree of conflict and suffering in the world, you have to chop out the roots, not trim the branches".

Middle Path spirituality reflects the integration of knowledge and insights from the field of psychotherapy with the spirituality and the spiritual disciplines of both current and ancient religious traditions…….a spirituality that embodies the idea that

if we truly intend to live a life that does no harm to others, then we cannot let anything that does cause harm to others enter into the way we think or live our life… …regardless of our contemporary cultural values, our various religious theologies, or our own ego’s opinions, beliefs, or certainties.

Virtually all of the conflict and violence we see around the world is created by rigid beliefs and the certainties of black and white thinking.² But in our Western culture, and especially in the Christian Church, we have learned to blame conflict, violence, and suffering on the devil. This practice of blaming the devil for evil and suffering effectively eliminates any possibility of world transformation since it denies the reality that the real source of violence is found in our own rigid beliefs and primitive black and white thinking,. This why I refer to rigid black and white beliefs and the certainties they create in each of us as the enemy of compassion. I find no conflict or violence in the world that does not have it’s roots embedded in the rich soil of black and white thinking. Can we begin to see that truth in our own lives?

Living a life on the middle path requires spiritual practices and mental health disciplines rarely found within either our world religions or our global culture. In fact, learning to walk the middle path of compassion requires revisiting the original teachings of people like Jesus and Buddha. For Christians especially, it means returning to a time before the emerging theology of the early Christian church turned the soft compassionate teachings of Jesus into the granite certainties, absolutes, and beliefs of the "faithful". Sadly, these rigid black and white theological beliefs have once again defined who is included and who is excluded….this time from the Kingdom of God and eternal life. The suffering these rigid theological certainties have caused over the last 2000 years is incalculable.

It has been said that insanity or mental illness is doing the same thing today that we did yesterday and somehow expecting a different outcome. As the level of conflict and suffering in the world continues to climb, it is clear that something has to change in the way we teach the children in our various global cultures that compassion is an important social and spiritual value.

It has to be obvious to anyone seriously concerned with increasing the capacity for compassion in the world, that teaching more religious theology, dogma, doctrines, and individual salvation is not the answer. In fact, throughout history, religious theology has clearly been a major contributor to the problem of global violence and suffering. Our news papers are filled with reports of death and suffering caused by the increasing terrorist activities of radical conservative religious and political groups in Ireland, India, Pakistan, Bosnia, Israel, Palestine, and Albania…to name only a few. If we are serious about becoming a culture that "does no harm", then we must be willing to embrace change.

Changing the simplistic black and white belief systems of childhood into the more complex gray belief systems of adulthood is a very difficult journey of transformation that very few people are able to accomplish. It requires a change in the way we think and view the world.

There was a patient in a psyche ward of a local hospital who insisted he was dead. No one had been successful in helping this patient overcome his distorted thinking. One day a young psychiatric resident asked his mentor if he could try to help this patient. The senior psychiatrist agreed.

The young resident said to the patient "I understand that you think you are dead". The man responded " I don’t think I’m dead, I know I’m dead".

The resident then asked him "Do dead people bleed"?

The man thought for a moment and then laughed and said "Of course dead people can’t bleed. Anyone knows that."

At that point, the resident took the man’s hand and pricked his finger with a needle. The finger began to bleed.

The resident pointed smugly to the man as said "then how do you explain the blood that is coming from your finger?"

The man looked thoughtfully at his finger for a while and then replied "That’s easy. It’s obvious that dead people do bleed."

The moral to this story is that when a firmly held belief encounters reality, reality suffers, not the belief.

Psychology teaches that our behaviors will always reflect our conscious and unconscious beliefs…..both primitive and mature. Our ego’s simply cannot act in any other way. Even if we attempt to change ourselves by force of will, the moment we forget we are trying to change, our ego will return our behavior back to that which is consistent with our inner beliefs.

If we wish to become compassion and do no harm to others, we must be willing to dig out the roots of violence and suffering that harden our own hearts, and eliminate the categories of otherness each of us create by our own black and white thinking process’. Conflict, violence, and suffering will continue to dominate our global culture until each of us as individuals can mature our thinking process and grow spiritually into the emptiness of compassion. When we raise our own ability to become compassion, we raise the compassion of the universe. When we make compassion visible, we make the Creator visible.

The middle path is simply an internal journey into emptiness, not knowing, silence, simplicity, living in the moment, and accepting reality for what it is. Middle path is a journey that each of us must take for ourselves, no one can do it for us. It requires the painful letting go of the cherished ego beliefs, certainties and opinions of simplistic thinking…..the emptying and quieting of our black and white childhood ego’s that "know" so much. Can we learn to do this for ourselves? On the middle path, there is no "otherness" …..only Unity and a Oneness with the Creator of the Universe. Can we recognize for ourselves that separateness and individualism are illusions created by our own egos?

Like all of the great spiritual teachers of history, Jesus and Buddha invited us to "see" the world in a new way. They knew that how we "see the world in a new way. They knew that how we "see" would determine the paths we would walk and the way that we would live our lives. Until we as adults learn how to eliminate the artificial categories and caste distinctions created by our black and white thinking, we will be unable to teach our children the insights and wisdom taught by these spiritual teachers. Until we learn to dig out the roots of violence that live within our own hearts, we will continue to have inquisitions, witch hunts, crusades, holy wars, cold wars, world wars, Tibet’s, Israel’s, Palestine’s, Ireland’s, Albania’s, and Bosnia’s.

Only open, vulnerable hearts can build a compassionate global community. We can be vulnerable only when we feel safe with one another. Compassionate communities will evolve only when we have learned how to live on the middle path where the categories of "otherness", and the violence and suffering they create, no longer exist. We must learn these skills and then find ways to teach them to our children. Only then will legislated moral values, work shops that teach us to establish boundaries to protect us from one another, and social programs designed to help the powerless and disadvantaged, that only trim the branches of conflict and suffering, no longer be important and needed.

Jesus, Buddha, and all of the great spiritual teachers and mystics of history, have spoken to us of the same truth………. that compassion has nothing to do with good deeds or believing in a certain way theologically. It is the result of a first hand encounter with the compassionate Creator of the Universe forged in the silence and emptiness of the middle path. When we have the courage to undertake this journey of transformation and spiritual growth that leads to the development of a middle path spirituality, only then we will stop doing self-righteous acts "of" compassion, and learn to "become" compassion. A compassion that knows no categories of otherness. A compassion born in silence and listening, not knowing, emptiness, and humility. A compassion we call God.

To become a person who does no harm in this moment I must learn to walk the middle path……a journey of spiritual growth and transformation…..to a place of emptiness and humility.

May I develop the wisdom of not-knowing.

To change and grow, I must be willing in this moment to shed my beliefs, certainties, and opinions just as a snake sheds it skin to grow.

May I develop the courage to not-know.

To know the truth of anything I must be willing in this moment to suspend belief and disbelief.

May I develop the skill of emptiness and listening.

To know the truth of anything, I must be willing to live in this moment with attention, honesty, gentleness, and compassion.

May I develop the gift of awareness.

To grow spiritually I must be willing to live in this moment as a co-creator with the Creator of the Universe making love and compassion manifest.

May I become compassion.

Life is like a brilliant flash of light and then it is darkness for eternity.

May I live my wild and precious life fully awake and conscious.

As I live this moment of my wild and precious life, will I stay awake and do these things, or will I fall asleep and do something else?