Mirror of Zen Blog

The Map

In the Buddha‘s insight, we call this the Middle Way: not the mental extremes of attachment or rejection, of overly expecting or painfully regretting, Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed the map this way:

In the morning I awake and find the old world, wife, babes, and mother, Concord and Boston, the dear old spiritual world and even the dear old devil not far off. If we will take the good we find, asking no questions, we shall have heaping measures. The great gifts are not got by analysis. Everything good is on the highway. The middle region of our being is the temperate zone. We may climb into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. Between these extremes is the equator of life, of thought, of spirit, of poetry, — a narrow belt.

”Experience” (1844)

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