The pages on this website have been gradually developing, to give a coherent account of the Middle Way in theory. However, theory is never enough. I’d like the posts on this site to often have a more practical or inspirational flavour. Here’s an example to start off with. The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra seems to me a strikingly inspiring example of the Middle Way in action. Here’s a video introducing it.

Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said have created something that integrates across entrenched boundaries and contributes to the breaking down of fixed metaphysical models that create conflict. They have done this, not through creating an idealised peace when the conditions for peace do not yet fully exist, but by creating some of the conditions for peace in shared meaning. If we recognise meaning as embodied rather than represented, music can be understood as highly meaningful to us because of its relationship to our basic physical processes – our pulse, heartbeat, physical movements and vocal processes. This sense of meaning forms a basis for metaphorical extension into the more abstracted meanings of language. A shared meaning based on music at least creates the conditions in which young people on different sides of the divide begin to talk to each other, and to recognise the meaningfulness of each others’ perspectives.

Robert Ellis