Balancing Fear and Denial

We’re now told, here in Massachusetts, that we can expect the rates of Covid-19 infection to peak within the next two weeks. The National Guard has begun building a field hospital for corona virus patients in the downtown Worcester community civic center where the local minor league hockey team used to play. Social distancing does seem to be having some impact, but the drumbeat of death tolls both actual and predicted fills the media. The stock market dropped another 4.4% yesterday. These are dark and uncertain times.

How do we find a way to go on living our lives in middle of it all? How do we find a middle way to live between panic and denial? How careful should I be? Should I stay inside all the time? Should I even go to the grocery store? How much is too much? Strangers, friends and families disagree. One of the Buddha’s first teachings after his awakening might be a helpful guide as we navigate these uncharted waters.

It is said that after the Buddha’s awakening, he came upon the small group of religious ascetics who had been his former colleagues on the path. He offered them what has become known as the teaching of the Middle Way.

Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable.

The path to awakening, the path to the fullness of life, avoids both extremes: the indulgence of sense pleasures and the addiction to self-mortification. The extreme of the anything goes—live for the moment and the opposite of a life of rigid self-denial. We are encouraged to find our way between an aimless life with no center and a fear-based life of inflexible adherence to a set of rules.

Our minds seem to like to break the world in two. White and Black. Right and Wrong. We want to make sure we are making the right decision, not the wrong one. The teaching of the Middle Way encourages us to see the world, and ourselves, as more fluid and dynamic than this simple bifurcation. While there are actions that are more or less helpful, our lives are not a series of morally fraught choices.

The teaching of the Middle Way encourages us to bring our whole selves to the moment we are encountering – our intellect, our emotions, our hopes, our fears all get included. The Middle Way is not a dull compromise but rather a fresh response to life – one that honors as much of any given situation as we are able.

Each choice we make is a creative expression of our life. We allow ourselves to be present with what is here and we sense our way into the future that is shaped by each one of our actions. We act, as best we can, in response to the conditions of the moment and in light of what we value most.

So may we live in these times. To proceed with care and appreciation—to live fully in this always unprecedented moment.