What Is the Middle Way?

Hi, I’m Paul Krismer, your happiness expert, and here I am in front of the big charging bull, the New York Stock Exchange, which is maybe the ultimate symbol of desire, of this desire for more in life. If we could just grow wealthy and have all the things, the material wants that we want met, and people come here and they touch that bull so they can have some of that luck wear off on them and they can just have more. That’s kind of representative of some of our worst parts of society too when we think of greed, we might think of that bull back there, and any kind of grasping, whether it’s for status, if we want to be famous and important, or have better relationships or better health, or any number of things that we grasp and want in our lives. We might think of this kind of symbolism, and anytime we’re grasping and wanting, we’re often there’s a little bit of pain, there’s something that’s not quite there, and there’s this concept of declining utility that with every additional dollar once you’re over a million bucks, you get very little benefit from it. But if you’re poor, if you only got one buck, an additional buck is a lot, and same with your health, if you’re in pretty good shape, you don’t need to be running yourself ragged, and if you’ve got, you know, a good reputation with the people who know and love you, then that’s pretty good too. So this video is all about not grasping and maybe looking at the kind of the eastern philosophy of the middle way. So stay tuned for that thought.

As a coach, public speaker, and best-selling author, I teach topics just like this one all around the world. So stay tuned, and I’ll give you practical tools that you can use to make both yourself and those around you both happier and more successful. Yeah, so I said this video is going to be about the middle way. Well, what exactly does that mean? Well, it sure as heck doesn’t mean living life is a roller coaster where we have these big ups and then low, low downs, and we pursue something that’s really wonderful, and we’re grasping, grasping, and grasping, and other times we don’t want, we don’t want, we’re an aversive, or we want sometimes to live in this grand luxurious style and then other times be all nature and minimalist and all that kind of stuff. Those are extremes, and the traditional eastern path, the kind of Buddhist view of middle way, was neither of those things. It was saying we’re neither rejecting every kind of indulgence that might make us feel comfortable and like where life is good and sustaining and valuable, and we’re also rejecting the extreme desire for wealth and comfort and kind of sensual indulgence. Neither of those, the middle way is the way to be happy, and the extremes don’t work at all. That was kind of a personal reflection of what the middle way is, and in Greek philosophy, there was this idea of the golden mean Aristotle mostly made it famous, and Aristotle meant it in terms of virtues which, in Greek philosophy, was a different path to happiness, is that if we lived a virtuous life and often the simple definition of virtue was simply that we wouldn’t be extreme in that way either. We would not be deficient of courage, so that we have a vice in that regard, we become a victim or we’re a coward, nor are we without any caution and therefore reckless and having all kinds of stunning extreme behaviors. Instead, the appropriate middle virtue, middle way, the golden mean, was the appropriate kind of disciplined reaction to a set of circumstances, neither reckless nor cowardice, but an appropriate level of courage, and we can use these examples of the middle way in our personal lives, and it also is really important in business. You know, I think of some people who are entrepreneurs and they stay small. I think especially a lot of healers and people in spiritual work, and they feel that they have no right to request adequate remuneration for their kinds of services and they feel a little bit guilty taking the money that they need for survival in a comfortable life, right? That would be deficient requirements for well-being. And of course, there’s the excesses like we saw at the beginning of the video with Wall Street money managers that are just excessively greedy and just want and watch and want to think that ripping off everybody and climbing over the next guy in order to get more and more and more is okay too, and that’s not good in business and the way we treat our employees. Well, there’s a middle way. We can’t give everybody all the money that the company has or every bit of money that they might want and time off that they might think that they should get, but we certainly don’t want to deprive them of the basic necessities to live and the comforts of finishing a day in a predictable pattern and not working too many hours, etc., etc. There’s a middle way, there’s a virtuous way that leads not only to better living but a happier life. Hey, if you like this kind of content, click the like button and share it with friends and family. Until next time, we’ll see you, bye for now.