The Middle Way Society was founded to promote the study and practice of The Middle Way. The Middle Way is the idea that we make better judgements by avoiding fixed beliefs and being open to practical experience. We challenge unhelpful distinctions between facts and values, reason and emotion, religion and secularism or arts and sciences. Though our name is inspired by some of the insights of the Buddha, we are independent of Buddhism or any other religion. We seek to promote and support integrative practice, overcoming conflict of all kinds.
A talk about the Middle Way, both in Buddhism and as a universal principle, delivered to a Buddhist audience on a hot day in the context of a camping retreat at Buddhafield.
Here’s a lovely talk given by Susan Averbach for an online celebration of the Jewish festival of Shavuot with the International Institute of Secular Humanistic Judaism. It begins with Tyler Perry’s speech about the Middle Way at the Oscars, includes a brief introduction to the Middle Way in general, some extracts about ‘Living Room Conversations’ that offer a way to put the Middle Way into action, and some reflections for Jewish practices that may support the Middle Way.
This book provides lots of insights about the causes of political polarization and absolutization in the US in recent years, and recommends some approaches to resolving it highly compatible with the Middle Way. Please see this page for a full review.
The next main meeting of the Middle Way Network will be on Zoom at 7pm UK time on Sun 11th Apr 2021. In this, the fourth and last of our meetings on the Middle Way in moral and political issues, Nina Davies, who is a member of the Middle Way Society, will give a talk on applying the Middle Way to ethical issues involving sex and gender.
Nina introduces her talk as follows: “Muravchik and Shields published their ethnography ‘Trump’s Democrats’ in August 2020. After years of pondering the attraction of Trump, I was convinced by their simple finding that he was a recognisable leader in communities with a traditional ‘honour and shame’ understanding of morality. This started me on a journey of looking at how the gender performance of machismo and misogynistic attitudes bubble up in societies we assume dominated by the ‘Western Liberal’ values. I have considered how honour and shame have become moral framework of social media, where truth and evidence are less important than reputation and status. In my talk I will demonstrate how identifying ‘honour and shame’ morality at work allows a great opportunity for Middle Way Philosophy.”
In this Network meeting there will be a short talk on this topic, followed by questions, then discussion in regionalised breakout groups, and a plenary session at the end. If you’re interested in joining us but are not already part of the Network, please see the general Network page to sign up. All the videos of previous Network stimulus talks are now indexed on this page.
Here is the video of the talk:
Suggested questions
These are three questions that may help you think about how you may have experienced an honour and shame morality system:
To what extent are marriage rituals a performance of traditional honour and shame values? Think about the difference in gender and kinship roles and how this may or may not illustrate aspects of honour and shame.
Have you ever felt obliged to return a favour or to show loyalty to a friend or relative? In what way is honour and shame morality at work in this situation?
Are their any circumstances under which would you consider your reputation or the reputation of your company or your team more important than the truth? Would that involve the hiding or disregarding of certain information?
From 25th April 2021 we will be relaunching our Middle Way Network with autonomous groups, separate talks, and a new website for communication.
New arrangements will be finalized in the meeting on 25th April, which will be the final one for the main meeting of the Network in its current form. If you’re involved in the Network, please get in touch with other people in your region to help agree the best arrangements for meetings before then. If you would like to join, this is a good point to do so – please fill in the form on this page. If you no longer want to be involved, please let us know.
The new sister website for network communication will be found at middlewaysociety.net. Please contact Vijaya (vijaya at middlewaysociety.org) for an early login to help test out and develop the new site.
