Chapter 6
Balance
There is a yoga of balance.
It consists of living a lifestyle balancing work, play, and eating.
Krishna has said, one who eats too much will not find their center, nor
one who eats too little.
One who lives in too much self-denial will be disturbed, not enlightened.
On the other hand, one who excessively indulges will not find their focus.
The Buddha has compared it to a musical instrument.
Draw the strings too tight and there will be no music, no vibration.
Keep the strings too loose, and again no vibration can occur.
Only in the middle can you create a symphony.
But how do you determine what is balanced?
How much food is too much, how much work is too much?
What kind of self-restraint is good, and what kind is negative?
You will not find the answer in a list of rules or a holy book.
This is because there is no absolute rules that can be made.
The only answer is to find balance in being natural.
They are synonymous: balance and nature.
Being natural is being in balance.
So how to be natural?
How do you find that balance?
There are two levels of naturalness.
In the first, you are practicing to be natural, because you must remember
you are not natural now; you are operating unnaturally.
In the first level, you must develop naturalness through effort.
Here, you must pause when you take action, be a witness of yourself, and
ask your heart to show you what is natural.
The heart is the temple of nature, it is what will guide you to flow.
You just pause, and watch your heart, and if what you are doing goes against
your heart, you will find you are acting unnaturally, out of balance.
But in the more advanced form, to be natural is not to pause for consideration.
In time, you will listen more and more to the heart, and you will be able
to be natural without making yourself witness.
You will always be witnessing, there will be no need to force it to happen.
Remember this, at first you make yourself witness, but do not think this
is the goal, do not think this is it.
It is only the intermediate step.
The goal is always be in balance, to be able to act completely spontaneously,
without consideration or examination.
Only then are you completely in the current, in the flow of the divine.
Before that you are still trying to keep your head above water.
But do not try to do that, just dive in with all of yourself.
It is natural.
But what is the advantage of this?
It seems like a great risk: not considering, not planning, being spontaneous.
It is frightening.
What are its benefits?
Will it really mean an end to sorrow, to suffering, to pain?
No.
To be natural is not to find some means to escape pain; neither is it
the dulling of happiness.
Rather, to be natural is to be balanced.
When there is happiness, be balanced.
When there is sorrow, be balanced.
This does not even mean to be artificially 'moderate'.
It simply means to keep acting natural.
Happiness draws people because it is active.
Then they wish to hold onto it, to stay in the excitement, the ecstasy
of happiness.
But of course, when they do this, it generates sorrow, because inevitably
you cannot keep holding on to happiness.
It is like trying to hold on to the daytime.
If you do not worry about it, daytime is lovely.
But if you wish for the daytime to last forever, then you will generate
suffering, because of your attachment.
And there is nothing wrong with the nighttime, either.
Why fear it?
The night is like sadness, it is just passive.
What most people think of as sadness is not the same as suffering.
When sadness comes as a state of being, and not due to any cause, you
should not be concerned about it.
It is just a time for being passive.
The feeling of happiness is like the daytime, and the feeling of sadness
is like nighttime.
Just be in each for what they are.
Just be balanced in each, do not hold on, or reject.
