The virtue of moderation

In a world seething with extremes of emotion moderation is a virtue, a balance, the moral courage to face the truth and negotiate the middle road. The wars we witness between Israel and Palestine, Russia, and Ukraine without hope of cease fire or truce and denial of saner voices are an expression of aggrandisement and delusion of power where they refuse to tread a middle path.

In a world beset with impermanence that permeates all aspects of life including inanimate objects and the ultimate powerlessness of man what place do tightly held beliefs and fundamentalist notions have?

History has taught us that empires have fallen and regimes have disappeared on account of the hubris of man and civilisations when they granted rights to its people and accepted their heterogeneousness, endured

Lord Buddha who was born a prince sought answers to the questions of life-the processes of pain, grief, ageing and ultimate departure. He subjected himself to self-abnegation and self denial but discovered neither indulgence nor deprivation as the key to life. He discovered the middle path or the golden mean the Madhyama Pratipada to life, shunning extremes.

The man who walks the middle path has a sense of proportion and equilibrium, that helps him to avoid the passions and pleasures of life on the one hand and extreme self mortification on the other. The eight fold middle path of Buddha comprises right views, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood,right effort, right mindfulness and right meditation. An adherence to these values would surely give us a sense of moderation.

The middle path we need to tread is by no means a compromise of our values but a negation of extremes that end in fruitless labour. All extremes of action and thought result in rigidity and firmly entrenched views of anger, resentment and hatred leaving no room for understanding, forgiveness or regret. It is only when we can see the point of view of others with empathy we arrive at moderation.

One of the great examples of moderation comes to us from Christ to whom a coin with the emblem of Caesar was brought and asked to whom the coin should be given, Caesar or God? Christa reply was ”Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.”