Mother Nature has all the answers to life; one has to be observant until the secrets are revealed. We all have witnessed heavy downpours, wherein strong winds and thunderstorm sweep an entire landscape. Try recollecting an observation in a forest landscape.

Have you ever observed that the biggest trees are the ones to get uprooted first during a thunderstorm? This is how natural regeneration of a forest takes place. The oldest and the biggest trees get uprooted and create space for the new ones to emerge. On the other hand, the smallest saplings present in the forest floor have the highest degree of proneness to get damaged, as they are generally uprooted by grazing animals.

The proneness of getting damaged is maximum for the smallest saplings and the largest trees in a forest range. As far as the wise minds have been guiding us, something similar is narrated for our lives too. It is well said that - Don’t perforate your ego so much that you are blown away by the windof circumstances like the big trees, neither bend down too much that even a goat grazes you down like the tiny saplings of the forest

This ideology of balance can be encountered being mentioned right from in the Bhagwadgita till the philosophy of HinayanaBuddhism. Swami Chinmayananda in one of his lectures on Bhangwad Gita took example of the ocean and explained the importance of non-extremism. He unfolded a story of alog of wood floating on the ocean which goes up and equally down along with the ocean waves.

Similar is the approach of an unstable person who reacts to life situations and takes extreme steps, he is governed completely by the life situations just like the waves governs the movement of the wood log. In the high points of life, he gets carries away with utter happiness and gets entangled with that joy but as the low points in life occur, he is shattered to the core. Then he explained the attributes of an ideal man or a yogi.

He compared a yogi to be like a lighthouse by the ocean, stable, steady yet observant. The waves go up and down hitting the lighthouse time and again, but the lighthouse remains rock solid and steady. Similar must be the nature of a true yogi who remains stable and steady in all the ups and downs in life, one who does not react to extremes and takes a balanced approach towards life. Likewise, Madhyammaargor the Middle way approach is an essential concept in Buddhist philosophy.
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