Unexpected Freedom

Unexpected FreedomThe Point of BalanceIf we pick up in the wrong way the Buddha’s teachings aboutgoing against our preferences, by thinking that there is someinherent virtue in following our dislikes, then we can hurtourselves. The Buddha himself, before he was enlightened,followed the path of self-mortification for some years. Itmade him very unhappy and he nearly died in the process. Inthe end he realised, ‘Well, that’s not the end of suffering.’ Hehad already concluded that gratifying his desires and makinghis life as comfortable as possible didn’t lead to trueunderstanding, because when he had encountered old age,sickness and death, he had become depressed and miserable.But practising asceticism and deliberately frustrating hisdesires hadn’t solved the problem either. In the end hecommitted himself to settling the matter once and for all and,seated resolutely under the Bodhi tree, made his finaldetermined effort to awaken. Relying on the accumulationof goodness over many lifetimes, he was able to come to thepoint of seeing for himself that taking any fixed position foror against his likes and dislikes creates suffering. Learninghow not to take a position for or against anything is freedom.The Buddha called his discovery the Middle Way.This Middle Way, the Buddha said, is born of rightunderstanding regarding the nature of things. But tounderstand this nature we need to go against ourpreferences. In the training of sila, we make the effort torefrain from following heedless tendencies. In formalmeditation we train ourselves in not moving whenever thereis an impulse to do so, and we restrain our minds, containingour attention when the mind’s tendency is to follow somepreference. We want to know, ‘Can I choose not tocompulsively follow this desire, this preference?’112