There were a few people who were peripherally involved with both Ch'an and Zen study. They were perpetually undernourished and clad almost in rags. One told me, "It's what you got to do to get enlightenment, man." Some were stoned on drugs, although most were making a serious quest.
In college I saw how some grad students and professors alike let excruciating workweeks wreck their health and marriages. I saw the same thing once I joined the work force: the toll that overwork can take on every edge of life.
At one contract job, I found a forty-something woman sleeping at her desk early one Friday morning; she had been working non-stop for three days to get a project done on time. I started past her desk when she roused. She scrambled to her feet and and started away. "I'll be back in a couple hours. I'm almost done, just a few more details... !" She wasn't back when I left that evening. I didn't see her until the following Monday; her eyes refused to meet mine. I never did learn what happened, but several days later her desk was vacant, stripped of her having been there.
Sometimes lives of radical deprivation or endless challenge do serve well; we're all unique. Most times, I think extreme routes of searching for happiness and fulfillment are like a locomotive racing toward derailment. A better route, I believe, follows the middle path through life's myriad theaters.
The middle path understands harmony
whose sense of symmetry and balance
strikes notes of beauty.
The Zen of harmony bears a noble temperament—
is the height of balance that sounds our depths—
its spirit is borne on the winds.
Such gifts reach the summit of accord;
they touch the secret soul.
Vigilant, curious, observant,
balance and harmony belong to whomever endures.
They bring mastery of the middle way.
With this mind set, joy comes.
With the sweetness of harmony and rapture of rhyme,
people flower as envies,
anxieties, and perplexities fade.
