This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Being Available and Aware: The Middle Way between doing and non-doing with Tanya Wiser. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Tanya Wiser at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit website www.audiodharma.org to find the authoritative record of this talk.
Hi, welcome. It’s so nice to be here with you all and out there on YouTube. I’m Tanya Wiser. I see some of you I’ve seen before, but maybe not all of you, so it’s nice to meet you. I am a teacher trained under Gil and Andrea Fella. I teach here on Thursday nights and in the eight-fold path program. So come on by Thursday night if you’re ever in the mood for doing dharma and then meeting in small groups and talking about the dharma topic. That’s the unique feature of Thursday nights; it’s a nice place to connect with Sangha.
What’s on my heart and in my mind to talk about tonight is exploring and discussing this idea of the middle way, the teaching of the Buddha on the middle way. For me, one of the key ways of describing being on this middle path is being available—being available to experience and respond to life in a particular kind of way. There’s a receptivity that we cultivate in our practice and an embodiment. The Buddha directed us to pay attention to our direct, felt experience and then to have these co-guiding wings of wisdom and compassion there and available, all helping us find this middle way.
I would also venture to describe it, in an incomplete way but in my way, as this middle way between doing and non-doing. It’s something that’s not exactly doing and certainly not exactly non-doing. So this word “available” may come up frequently as I explore my reflections with you.
This understanding, this connection with the idea of a middle way, was the pivotal insight that the Buddha had that actually led to his liberation, to his complete freedom. As many of you probably know, the story goes that he started his life with a lot of luxury, a lot of indulgence, and sensual pleasures in a protected lifestyle. Then he left his home and his family to pursue freedom. He wanted to have a different kind of experience of life. His first teachers were teachers who taught concentration practices, these very refined mind states that can be quite pleasant and beautiful abidings. But what the Buddha found over time was that he could master these quite easily and was soon asked to be a teacher of the practice he was being taught, but they didn’t bring him any true freedom. There was no lasting impact of the experience.
So then he turned toward complete renunciation and asceticism and pursued extreme restriction in his life. There’s this story that he got down to eating one grain of rice a day and sleeping on nails and all kinds of things that they practiced to try and learn how to endure pain and to not indulge oneself in any sensual pleasures.
This insight into the middle way occurred as he was nearly dying on the side of a riverbank. Some person discovered him there and offered him some food. The Buddha was reflecting on all the striving he’d done in both directions of his life. This is a quote from the Majjhima Nikāya 36[^1], the sutta[^3] where he’s reflecting on this experience and this understanding of a middle way. The Buddha thought, “Whatever recluses or brahmins in the past have experienced painful, racking, piercing feelings due to exertion, this is the utmost.” What he was going through. “But with this racking practice of austerities, I have not attained any distinction with higher knowledge and vision. I have not attained any distinction with higher vision and knowing.”
This was a pretty major reflection for him to have. It’s said that his companions who had been practicing austerities with him saw him eat and thought, “Oh, he’s given up. What a waste. We’re not going to follow or practice with him anymore.” And they left. So here he was on his own, and choosing essentially to live again, choosing to eat so that he could survive.
He remembered a childhood experience, and this memory was what cracked open this idea of another way forward. It was a memory that I’ll embellish with my own associations. In the simple way in the sutta, it’s described as him sitting on the side of a field where his father was either involved with plowing or a ritual of plowing, and he was set under a rose apple tree. He was off on the side, watching, and young.
Here’s where I’ll embellish. Let’s imagine for a minute the scene: being a young child, you’ve been brought to this place by your parent and you’ve been sat down in this spot. I imagine with a blanket, with water, or whatever he needed, as a parent might set their child down and say, “Okay, just relax.” He’s under the shade of a tree, and it’s a rose apple tree, so maybe it was blooming and it smelled nice, or there were apples, who knows. But I’m imagining he’s quite comfortable, quite content. He can see his dad, so he’s like, “Okay, I’m okay.” And his dad is busy doing this plowing thing or ritual.
He recalls the experience of being there, and he describes it in terms of it being radiant, of this pleasant abiding. He actually describes it as a very pleasurable experience, but it wasn’t an experience where he was actively generating or creating pleasure.