some of you are probably familiar with the language of the middle way or the

middle path yeah and it's not the bland thing sometimes we hear it to be it's a

description of Buddhism and what it means is that to walk the middle path is to

walk a path where we're neither possessed we're not taken over by our thoughts

and feelings but nor are we cut off so it's a path of engagement of being

completely engaged and yet free in the midst and there's a cartoon I love that

has a dog who's sleeping and the caption says Zen dog dreaming of medium-sized

bone now this middle way does not describe our culture we're not a middle

way culture we are beyond prone to excess whether it's the size of the

portions we the size of our cars our homes this commitment to having an ever

growing economy we are a very addicted culture and if you look and say well

what's behind that you know what what is it that has this amount of grasping

in our culture what we find is that if you think of it on an individual level

if someone's at home with themselves you know if they're at home in their

bodies and their hearts and with each other there's not a need to grasp right

and we there's not a need to go after more there's more of a sense of enough

there's more contentment that doesn't mean there's not desire and longing but

there's not that clutching okay but when we're not at home with ourselves when

there's a lot of fear in our bodies as a individual and as a culture then that

consuming and that pursuing of more more more becomes an endemic right so it is a

misunderstanding that I often run into of Buddhism that we're trying to get rid

of desire and this is a bit of the topic tonight that we're in in this path

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