The Central Hypothesis of this blog

This weekend after a few years of absence I remembered the central thesis of my life. It got lost in 2003 when I first questioned the relationship between man and nature which diverted my energies, and then in 2004 when I tried to become a mediator at a Chinese temple totally forgetting my own input, and then last year through tolerance of an unwanted relationship. Finally its back and I'm on rails again.

The Thesis
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Straight from Buddha comes the idea of Middle Path. He realised that neither abstinence nor indulgence achieved anything. Indulging in life's pleasures is only satisfying when we have a short sight that can stick its head in the sands of current experience. Things are great when it's pleaure, we have difficulty when things are unpleasant. Going to the other extreme and shifting entirely to the long view removes us from current concerns and that is detrimental to our healthy. The balance is the right view.

I concluded, especially from this but it is present elsewhere, that physical comfort and material progress were not essential to life. A completely happy, satisfying and successful life is available without any loss through a life of poverty. Indeed it is mastery of such things as loss and poverty which achieve this.

Such a view frees me from much that is traditionally viewed as "important" and despite what Mahayana Buddhists try to convince themselves, is very consuming to our time and effort.

If it is possible to achieve a completely full life through moderate poverty, it also follows that riches are indeed futile, or at least unnecessary for life and pursuit of them is a life wasted.

Its a work in progress, I now understand the cause of my current life - which for personal narrative reasons is very centering, since I was searching for it and thereby unsatisfied.

It has obvious real implications also. Social and financial inequality - which is one of those blatant absurdities that jarr violently which the rhetoric of free society - is no longer an important feature.

With the significance of economic prosperity anulled the constrant human drive to transform the environment is tempered, and that gives breathing space for other excluded aspects of the environment - like nature.

The space such a simple acceptance of poverty creates is what I believe is the space in which we can develop a meaninful existence and that is the current root of this blog and of my life.

QED