The Middle Way

 

It seems the patriarchy has often ruled over civilizations and the institutions of civilizations, such as religion, and in smaller societies the matriarchy has played at least an equal if not greater role in matters such as spirituality.  Why is it that the more complex the society, the more men are able to seize control and positions of power?  Is it because everyone recognizes the unfairness of this, and in smaller societies men (or any other group, for that matter) simply cannot get away with it?  They cannot gather enough power together to get that critical mass to build the steamroller, for there isn't enough social "mass" to draw from to begin with.  And the society is too close to allow this to go unnoticed, and so they stop it before it can ever grow out of hand.  This is not to say there were no male or female dominated smaller societies, just perhaps not to the degree we see in our civilization.

Nor in the spiritual world, where, behind the veil one can sense that there is a very male spirit dominated world, rife with the same toxicity that all too often accompanies sick masculinity in the physical form; the one reflects the other, after all.

There is a sort of toxic masculinity that seeks to spread and take over and dominate and control in the spiritual world, and subjugate anything less than the strongest and fiercest and insensitive of masculine force.  Perhaps this is a natural occurrence, because the strongest will of course rise.  But then why hasn't a weaker but more moral middle ground banded together to stop the top tier from dominating, to keep them in check, to keep them from subjugating?  If the strongest are naturally inclined to rule by evolutionary law, then the weaker are inclined to resist tyrannical rule by alliance.

This is the non-Buddhist Middle Way.  It is the idea that the few who are strongest will always rule the many who are not, just as the one percenters in our civilized economy rule all others through their accumulation of wealth.  But almost all people are middle class (or, in American economy, used to be).  In spiritual terms, almost all people are neither extremely feminine nor extremely masculine.  Two thirds of any normal distribution is within the first standard deviation.  It is this central Middle Way, this majority, that can easily find common ground, not extreme or radical in any way, and stand up for what is right and fair for all, both in the material world, and much more profoundly, in the spiritual world.