State of the World vs. State of the Mind and the Middle Path

This is inspired by the comments to my first entry by Rashmi and conversations with Marisa and Pulkit. I didn’t quite understand the comments fully made by Rashmi at that time, since I was thinking in a different context in my first post. It is little abstract, in order to avoid diluting the real thing. There is some noise though.

State of the World vs. State of the Mind and the Middle Path

So, how can we make a contribution to this world? The obvious first thought is to change the state of the world. Another school of thought is to change the state of the mind. Yet another is ‘I don’t care’. Perhaps, the best one, in my mind, is the middle path between the first two.

The first one (Logic): After some thought, we quickly realise that this is difficult thing to do for individuals and perhaps even more difficult to assess. The amount of influence we have as an individual to change the state of the world is limited; but certainly, some positive, how-so-ever small changes can be made. Very temporal.

The second one (Spiritual): Without much thought, we quickly realise that this is difficult thing to do. But, unlike the first, the amount of influence we have as an individual to change the state of the mind is complete and absolute.

(Some interesting noise: I think there are domains where logic is not applicable, and when applied leads to misleading, but intuitive thoughts or worse, chaos. So, if we accept this then, we must realise that there will be things that we don’t understand at any given time; a) which someone else may have a better understanding at that given time, or b) we may understand it better in some other time (past or future)).

The third one (Ignorance is bliss): This viewpoint is fine. It may or is likely to change sometime in future, which is good. (Some interesting noise: If ignorance is bliss, why do we seek knowledge? – by someone).

The last one (Borrowed from Buddhism, in particular, Buddhadasa Bhikkhu's interpretation of it): Why Middle? Is it because I couldn’t make up my mind? No. The answer is little vague – Consider two things.

a) ‘Nature has better imagination than humans’ (by someone famous, prob. Feynman).
b) I was recently told that Buddha tried a simple experiment in quest for happiness – he ate lots and lots of food, but didn’t find happiness; he tried no or very little food for several days and didn’t find happiness. But the middle path, created by nature, gave most happiness.

A middle path that aims to positively change the state of the world and the state of the mind, should create a mind that is least surprised by negative changes in the state of the world or the state of the mind, as it benefits from the best-of-both and allows for mutual-compensation. By least surprised, I mean least surprised by noise.


The easy bit - that describes the middle path, is done. The difficult bit is me absorbing the idea, more so, following it and even more - assessing it. It also appears that there is little conscious effort that can be made to absorb or follow it, assessment seems un-necessary. If so, then this reduces to a sub- conscious thought.

What’s the point of this blog entry? The point is not to convince you something is good or better, but to simply put something in your sub- conscious, which by reading this has already happened (reminds me of the ‘Don’t think of Pink Elephant’ that someone recently mentioned to me!).