In Buddhist psychology, there’s a concept dubbed “the middle way” that can make life a little easier.

The ancient Indian son of an oligarch turned spiritual master we now call the Buddha told his followers: “There is a middle way between the extremes of indulgence and self-denial, free from sorrow and suffering.”

Indulgence is our default way of being. We follow our mind’s every whim into the past or future, replaying memories or worrying about tomorrow.

Like a gripping Netflix drama, we indulge the storyline, which sweeps us away.

Denial is a little different but almost as common—and far more destructive. It’s our internal critic, rearing its toxic head as a “should” or “shouldn’t.” I shouldn’t be thinking these thoughts. I should be a little skinnier. I shouldn’t be so afraid.

Both take us away from the only place life is happening, the present moment. Both keep us at a distance from tasting our food, savoring the mystery of the night sky, or feeling someone’s love for us.

Last weekend, while RV camping with my parents, I got a front row seat to my denial. In such close quarters, I saw firsthand how judgmental I can be. I judged my mom for cleaning up relentlessly. I judged my dad for talking everyone’s ears off. I even judged myself for judging so much.

One morning, after tripping over a bowl in the middle of the RV, I judged my parents’ two standard poodles for not putting away their food bowls. How silly!

The middle way is accepting whatever is happening in the present moment—including thoughts—rather than following our habitual patterns of indulgence and escape. The middle way is waking up to the endless possibilities. The middle way is inner freedom.

The Buddha once welcomed into his home a musician who was discouraged with his meditation practice.

“What happens when you tune your instrument too tightly?” the Buddha asked.

“The strings break,” the musician replied.

“And what happens when you string it too loosely?”

“When it’s too loose, no sound comes out,” the musician answered. “The string that produces a tuneful sound is not too tight and not too loose.”

“That,” said the Buddha, “is how to practice: not too tight and not too loose.”

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It wasn’t on a meditation cushion where Zen Buddhist priest Edward Espe Brown learned this priceless lesson about how the mind works — it was in the kitchen.

While cooking at San Francisco Zen Center — before he wrote the now-classic The Tassajara Bread Book — he wasn’t happy with his biscuit recipe.

“Growing up I had made two kinds of biscuits. One was from Bisquik and the other from Pillsbury,” he writes.

“I really liked those Pillsbury biscuits. Isn’t that what biscuits should taste like? Mine weren’t coming out right … People who ate my biscuits would extol their virtues, eating one after another, but to me these perfectly good biscuits just weren’t right.”

One day, he thought, “not right” compared to what?

“I’d been trying to make canned Pillsbury biscuits! Then came an exquisite moment of actually tasting my biscuits without comparing them to some previously hidden standard. They were wheaty, flaky, buttery, sunny, earthy, real. They were incomparably alive — in fact, much more satisfying than any memory.”

What Brown experienced could be explained by the Japanese concept of shoshin, or “beginner’s mind.”

Buddhist monk Shunryu Suzuki — who happens to have founded the San Francisco Zen Center — explained it this way: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

Brown had to let go of his expectations of what biscuits should taste like to really, truly taste his own.

We might rewrite Suzuki’s famous line to, “In the beginner’s [state of] mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

He didn’t mean that we shouldn’t gather skill, knowledge, and expertise. He was pointing out that the mind has a tendency to compare what’s happening to what could, should, or would be happening — and that this comparing holds us back.

Close your eyes. Take a few deep breathes. Feel your lungs expanding and the air entering your nose. Now, watch your thoughts — see where they go.

You’ll quickly notice that your mind wanders into the past or future almost immediately. It grabs a passing thought and you’re off, swept away into remembering, worrying, planning, etc.

If you zoom in close enough, you’ll see that what sweeps you away is that tendency to compare.

Judgments cause us to grasp on to certain thoughts, which turn into further judgments. I should be meditating better. I shouldn’t have said that to her. My back shouldn’t be hurting. I could be watching Game of Thrones.

As Shakespeare’s Hamlet said, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

On the other hand, the beginner’s state of mind is judgment free. It’s open, curious, available, and present. It’s filled with sights, smells, tastes, sounds, and feelings — not thoughts about that sensory data.

Meditation allows us to rest in beginner’s mind. When we notice that we’re swept away, we let go of the thought and bring our attention back to our breath — over and over again.

This letting go creates a gap between what’s happening — our thoughts, sounds, sensations in the body — and our mind’s tendency to compare. It allows beginner’s mind — our natural mindfulness — to emerge to fill in the gap.

With a mindful state of mind, we can apply skills and knowledge as needed. We can do what needs to be done. We can adjust the biscuit recipe. We can have an honest conversation with our partner. We can work with a therapist to unpack our unconscious beliefs and patterns.

Yes, we’re expecting things to change, but we’re no longer resisting what is.

Of course, expertise is useful. We wouldn’t want the doctor performing our surgery to suddenly forget what she’s doing.

But we do want her to be mindful, to not be thinking she should be at home watching Netflix.

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Word has it, the ancient Indian radical and spiritual master known as the Buddha once asked his students, “If a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful?”

“It is,” they answered.

He then asked, “If the person is struck by a second arrow, is that even more painful?”

“It is,” they answered.

“In life, we cannot always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. And with this second arrow comes the possibility of choice,” he said.

What the Buddha was getting at is that there’s a difference between pain and suffering.

Pain is the obvious stuff, getting fired, wrecking your car, waking up with a hangover. It’s the not so obvious stuff for some of us, being pulled over by a cop because of the color of your skin, getting catcalled while walking down the street, opening the envelope of your student loan bill.

It’s also something we feel inside, emotionally, when life doesn’t live up to our expectations.

“The first arrow is our human conditioning to cling to comfort and pleasure and to react with anger or fear to unpleasant experience,” writes meditation teacher Tara Brach, in her book True Refuge.

We live most of our days in a “trance,” Brach calls it, wishing that life, our job, our boyfriend, this country, were different.

All it takes is a few minutes of watching where our mind goes during meditation to see that we’re often somewhere other than the present moment. We’re fantasizing about a crush, and then zing…we’re worrying about asking our boss for a raise.

This trance is painful because it holds us back from being present. When our mind is in the past or future, our body clenches up and we miss out on the very thing we’re searching for: the deep connection we feel when we’re fully open and alive, not holding back.

But pain is inevitable. Everyone experiences some level of trauma as a kid, which shapes our emotional reactions.

And underneath all the stories about greatness and dreams, this society is exceptionally violent, overworked, uncared for, overmedicated, unfulfilled, overpoliced, underpaid, and barreling towards climate disaster. No wonder we want things to be different.

What isn’t inevitable is suffering, caused by the story about ourselves that we add on top of the pain — to explain it, to get away from it, to indulge in it.

A colleague recently emailed me criticizing how I had been communicating with them about a project we were collaborating on. It wasn’t just a miscommunication — they described my behavior in a way that was extremely different from my experience.

I felt angry, then sad, and then, most painful, a deep sense of doubt. My mind filled with stories. Do I have any idea how I come off to others? Are all my friends just pretending to like me? I’m too busy always trying to be “nice” rather than honest.

Notice what’s at the center of these stories: me, a “self,” an ego. When this “self” is at the center of the story, we suffer.

Why? Because telling stories about a “self” turns us into a frozen, unchangeable character in a movie. It separates us from the everchanging flow of life, from the fact that we’re always learning and growing. It disconnects us from the connection we seek. We blame ourselves because we are just the way we are — broken, unworthy of belonging, unworthy of love.

I spent two days firing more arrows into a fresh wound by blaming my “self” for what happened.

That’s not to say I wasn’t to blame. We must take responsibility for our role in the pain, especially if we hurt other people.

But beating myself up didn’t help anyone — as the Buddha said, it was even more painful. For two days I felt as lonely as I did in my early 20s, the loneliest time of my life.

How do we stop the suffering? By going to the body.

When you notice that you’re beating yourself up, when you’re lost in a story of self-blame, ask yourself, “Where and how is this showing up in my body?”

Maybe it’s a clench in your stomach or a dull pain in your chest. Feel the raw sensations that accompany the story. Give them time and space, allowing them to just be as they are.

If the feelings are too overwhelming, put your attention on the movement of your breath or the sounds around you. Many of us carry untreated trauma that needs time and professional therapy to carefully unpack.

Usually, through being mindful of what’s going on in the body, we eventually see the stories for what they are. Then we can investigate where they came from so we can notice them even quicker next time they appear.

Talking with a close friend or therapist can help. Learning about capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy can help us see how those in power turn us against each other.

The Buddha’s whole jam was enlightenment, the end of suffering. I don’t think that’s a healthy expectation.

But learning the difference between pain and suffering can give us, as he told his students, “the possibility of choice,” also known as freedom.

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