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So as many of you, there have been catalogs coming my way, giving guides for the holidays,

and one of them, and I saw this some years back, also get a Zen sugar high and a dose of antioxidants

with a solid dark chocolate Buddha from Neem and Marcus. So this is Buddhism in the West.

You might be familiar with Buddhism as described as the middle way or the middle path. Some of

you, it's also been described as the upper middle path. But the middle, it's an interesting set of words,

the middle way, because it sounds bland, but it's actually the quite the opposite of bland.

The one very simple way of understanding the middle way is that it's neither grasping,

you know, chasing after pursuing, but nor is it a, nor is there a disengagement or dissociation.

It's very engaged living, but with hands wide open. So one of the cartoons I saw a few years ago

that describes this perfectly is, I had a sleeping dog and it said Zen dog dreaming of medium-sized bone.

Which of course doesn't in any way describe much of our contemporary society where there is so much,

billions of dollars spent to get our brains to want more and to spend more and to consume more

and to produce more. And so the use, you know, the over-consumption of food and drugs and big homes and

big cars and what it does to our earth. You know, and it's not even a question assumption

that the economy is supposed to keep on growing. That's an assumption. And yet in the history of the

universe, nothing, no life form, nothing keeps on growing. It's not sustainable for our planet.

So you see this, we don't have the medium-sized bone in our psyche for the most part.

And so it gets interesting to look at, you know, what is it that keeps us chasing and pursuing and

grasping? And, you know, I sometimes think of it this way that if we look at our personal lives,

and we bring to mind a moment in recent weeks or days or whatever when we felt really happy,

...