中道Middle Tao
The Middle Tao is cultivation
What it is
If you are on the path of cultivation, you are in the Middle Tao
The Middle Tao has no end point; it is a road being walked. Whether you are in it depends on one thing only: whether, right now, you are on the path of cultivation, and whether the path is your own.
So there is no threshold. A revered monk or a Daoist priest is in the Middle Tao; so is someone who leaves early and comes home late to make a living, as long as the heart is on the road. Standing, learning, achievement and religious vows are not the measure.
Master Kang belongs to the Middle Tao for that reason alone: the cultivation is still going on.
The Way of the Mean
Not higher, not lower, not larger, not smaller: the road that is yours
The Middle Tao is also called the Way of the Mean. Everyone has a right road of their own. It need not be higher than anyone else’s, or larger. It suits your nature, your circumstances and your heart. To find it and keep walking it is the Middle Tao.
- Just rightIt fits your nature, your situation and your heart. The road is yours, and walking it steadily is what lets you walk it long and far.
- Not reaching too highYou need not strain toward someone else’s heights and turn yourself into another person.
- Not selling yourself shortNor need you think so little of yourself that a good road seems meant for others.
- Not grasping at the grandNo leap to the top in one step, no demand that everything be complete.
- Not scorning the smallOrdinary days and small chores are not beneath you; cultivation happens in them.
Cultivation
No form required, only the heart
The cultivation meant here is not burning incense, chanting sutras or sitting in meditation, nor the pursuit of immortality.
Any small matter of daily life, the silence after an argument or a decision made late at night, becomes cultivation the moment you turn around and look at your own heart.
Everything turns on the heart
- Form does not matterRitual, place, implements and auspicious hours: none of them is required.
- Only self-reflectionWhether you turn back and look at this heart of yours.
- Whatever you cultivateBuddhism, Daoism, any discipline at all, or simply yourself: all of it counts.
Sources
A ferry crossing, not the far shore
- Confucian
- Buddhist
- Daoist
- School of mind
- Western psychology
The Middle Tao gathers what is best in Confucian, Buddhist and Daoist thought, carries on Wang Yangming’s teaching that everything turns on the heart, and has no quarrel with Western theory and psychology. Whatever helps a person settle and move forward, it takes up.
But it is not a fourth school. It takes no disciples, founds no sect and asks for no conversion. If through it you come to understand a little Buddhist thought, or catch something of the Daoist heart, and are drawn onto the path of cultivation, the Middle Tao has done its part. It only sees you onto the boat; where the boat goes is yours to choose.
In Libo
An answer, never a sentence to resign yourself to
Charting, casting hexagrams, choosing dates, comparing two charts, reading the classics: the means differ, and the aim is one, to bring a person one step further along the path.
What a chart concludes is a mirror and a signpost. Anything that leaves you feeling “this is my fate and I must accept it”, however accurate, is not the Middle Tao. So besides telling you what the chart shows, every reading leaves you three things:
- A reminderThe next time you reach the same threshold, you will know where to take more care.
- A stratagemSomething you can take out and use at once when this kind of matter comes round again.
- A look inwardLooking back at yourself through this one matter, you may come away seeing a little further.
Words of the Middle Tao
Every reading ends with a few words of the Middle Tao, written by Master Kang for you alone, about the very thing you asked. Once the matter is clear, the heart should have somewhere to rest as well.
Six Foundations
See which foundation it is, and you know where to begin
Middle Tao psychology holds up six mirrors. When someone feels stuck, it is seldom that fate is against them; more often one foundation has grown weak, or is being overused. In every reading, Master Kang names the one or two that matter most for the very thing you asked, and gives you one small step you can take today.
- Standing on your ownCan you say no? Your life is yours to decide, and your boundary is yours to keep.
- ResilienceWhen you fall, can you get up again? Holding on, and knowing when to rest.
- ConfidenceCan you trust your own judgement? Grounded in reasons, and free to correct it.
- Self-acceptanceCan you tell yourself “that is enough”? The good and the bad are both you.
- ContentmentCan you stop? You are already enough, with no need to keep grasping outward.
- Self-respectNeither servile nor arrogant: reserved without shrinking, open without looking down on others.
Each can lean two ways. Too little shows up as leaning on others, giving up, self-doubt, self-punishment, grasping or servility; too much as control, pushing through at any cost, arrogance, self-absorption, shutting people out or haughtiness. The order of practice matters too: stand first, then grow resilient, then confident; accept yourself before you look for contentment; self-respect runs beneath them all.
The canon
The Middle Tao, in two hundred sayings
Master Kang will publish a book, The Middle Tao: two hundred sayings, numbered from “Middle Tao, I”.
It is not written to be pondered for years, as the Tao Te Ching is, but more like a pouch of stratagems: close to old verse and plain classical Chinese, short and direct, understood as soon as it is read, and just as clear in translation.
When the time is right, the Middle Tao will open to everyone. From any country, in any language, a line you arrive at through something you have lived may, once chosen, be added to the book as saying two hundred and one, two hundred and two, and on.
觀妄念安當下煩惱，秉中道立世間本心，入世即修行。
See through the wandering thought, and this moment’s trouble settles. Hold to the Middle Tao, and the original heart stands in the world. To enter the world is itself the practice.
The Middle Tao is not far away. Start with the one thing you cannot put down right now.