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"Everything in moderation including moderation."
This bit of advice from "How to Live Like a Monk" by Daniele Cybulskie is a reminder to take a dynamically balanced approach to wellness and happiness.
The middle way is more than a simple straight line between extremes. Instead, it is a prescription for applying skill and intelligence to living a rewarding, meaningful, happy, and healthy life.
Sometimes renunciation is most effective, for example when you have become habituated or addicted to harmful behavior. But that can be taken too far. Why deny yourself pleasure when it does not harm yourself or others?
In my book, "The Peaceful Warrior's Path" I write about an approach that
"attempts to attain freedom while living in the world and experiencing the fullness of life. Instead of taking a renunciative approach which views pleasure as a trap to be avoided the Tantric way embraces everything.
"Tantra is about using all experience as a means for bringing powerful subtle energy up from the lower energies of physical pleasure to transform it into bliss beyond sensuality. Since sexual experience is so powerful in and of itself, it has been used as a vehicle for this transformation. The practitioner learns to exercise physical and mental control to make that transformation."
But sex is not the only vehicle. Eating a perfect peach or having a cold beer on a hot day offers moments of pleasure."[1]
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