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The Middle Way Treatise - Talk 09
When we speak of the one who walks and the act of walking, we immediately encounter a deep contradiction: we imagine that there is a “walker” who exists independently outside of the act, and that the act is also separate from the “walker,” while in reality, the actor and the action are one. For example, wind cannot be separated from blowing—wind that does not blow is no longer wind—similarly, a king is a king because he is performing the act of being king; if he does not act as king, there is no king. This is the Confucian doctrine of correct designation: to call things by their true names according to their intrinsic nature, without adding or subtracting. When we say “to know the wind,” the word “know” is unnecessary, because in the wind there is already the quality of awareness; it is enough to simply say “wind.” Likewise, if we think there is a “knower” standing outside of knowing, that is a mistake according to the teachings of the Middle Way: there is only knowing, there is no separate self.
From the eleventh gatha in the Middle Treatise, the four essential terms for contemplating all phenomena are:
- dependent co-arising (things arise due to conditions)
- emptiness (their nature is originally empty)
- conventional designation (all are merely provisional names)
-
the middle way (neither existence nor nonexistence; neither coming nor going, neither birth nor death)
The T’ien-t’ai school in China is based on the threefold contemplation of emptiness, conventional designation, and the middle, as the foundation for perceiving the truth. In the light of the threefold contemplation—signlessness, aimlessness, and non-self—all phenomena, including breathing, walking, arriving, dwelling, are continuous transformation, without any fixed position, helping us to transcend all suffering and notions of a permanent self.
Nature, Mother with green hair, butterflies, birds, flowers, and leaves are wondrous manifestations of the ultimate dimension of no birth and no death. When we look and listen—like hearing the stream sing, the birds call, or seeing the sky’s color in someone’s eyes—the subject and object become one, no longer two. Love and the fear of loss are only products of deluded thinking. With a single arrow of insight, we can bring down both illusory flags—the one who goes and the one who stays—and enter the middle way, realizing that nothing is lost and nothing is added. Today’s smile and breath are themselves the endless spring song of the Dharma body, leading us beyond all illusions of birth and death.