The Middle Way: No To Sithhood

Statue of Standing Buddha

The Buddha extolled the Middle Way or Middle Path as always best, by which he basically meant "the practice of non-extremism."

Specifically, according to Wikipedia, the Buddha chose "a path of moderation away from the extremes of self-indulgence and opposing self-mortification. Gautama [Buddha] found the middle way after experiencing extremes — he renounced his luxurious royal family life and became an ascetic before attaining Enlightenment."

I'd like to think that I too, though no Buddha, am inclined to look for the Middle Way in all things.


This has relevance in the context of a "debate" which can be constructed between two recent opinion columns. From the right comes "In Defense of Certainty," an essay by Charles Krauthammer in the June 6, 2005, TIME. From the left — or, actually, is it the middle? — we have Clarence Page with his May 25, 2005, op-ed piece "'Darth Bush'?".

Krauthammer has it that the liberal secularists among us have launched a "campaign against certainty," their thinly disguised way to oppose "unseemly religiosity" among President Bush's judicial nominees and others.

Though Krauthammer admits that he himself is "not much of a believer," in any religious sense, clearly the columnist holds "deeply held views" concerning "moral certainty" in the abstract. To wit, he favors it.

Page is not so sure. He worries that the desire for moral certainty paves the way for dictators, à la the recent Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith movie.

To understand what Page is on about, it helps to read Baltimore Sun movie critic Michael Sragow's review of the movie, "Jedi Masterful", in which Sragow says "you witness with understanding as well as horror the desire for certainty that transforms the Republic into an evil Empire."

The film documents the turning of the good Jedi knight Anakin Skywalker into the dark lord Darth Vader. Anakin loves Padme Amidala, a princess who is his secret wife. His "fear of Padme's death, which he sees in a prophetic vision, reflects his emotional greed and irrational urge for control." That, in turn,

.... makes him vulnerable to the Dark Side [of the Force] and to the manipulations of Chancellor Palpatine, his friend. Palpatine takes on ever-more dictatorial powers, promising peace and stability to the Republic (and to Anakin, the power to save Padme). In effect Palpatine says he will destroy the Republic to save it -- and in the shrinking circle of Jedi and uncorrupted Senators like Padme and [certain others], only Anakin accepts his word.

So the Jedi knight becomes the evil Sith. It is Anakin's conversion to the Dark Side, out of his all-too-human need for certainty and control, which brings on the Evil Empire. "The whole movie is about," writes Sragow, "the difficulty of steering a true course when a galaxy is in turbulence."

Here's Page's own synopsis of what's at stake in the film:

"If you're not with me, you're my enemy," declares Anakin Skywalker as he drifts over to the "dark side" morphing into the evil Lord Darth Vader and echoing [President] Bush's warning "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists" after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Ouch.

Anakin's mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, retorts: "Only a Sith thinks in absolutes." Double ouch.

Bad-guy Chancellor Palpatine exploits war fears to consolidate his power, suspend democratic rule and turn the Republic into a dictatorship. It's not hard to hear echoes here of Congress' rush to pass the USA Patriot Act that expanded government search and eavesdropping powers after the Sept. 11 attacks. Padme Amidala ... laments, "This is how liberty dies: with thundering applause." Triple ouch.

"Only a Sith thinks in absolutes," if true, would make the likes of Charles Krauthammer, along with President Bush, most of his administration, and many of his supporters, Siths.

If one thinks in absolutes, one cannot find the middle way. The middle way lies between two extremes which, at first blush, seem to exhaust all possibilities and present us with an ineluctable either-or choice. At first, no third way, no middle path, is evident. There just seem to be the two opposed absolutes, one of which is perforce good and the other of which is evil. Make your choice.

The middle way is the way of creation. One creates it as much as finds it. It's the secret door in every fantasy story, the one which isn't apparently there to begin with, and if discovered can't be opened without the right incantation.

Often, it takes the naivete of a child to know what to do. Star Wars creator George Lucas represents the creative power of supposedly childish intuition in the first film of the series, Episode IV—A New Hope, when Luke Skywalker, at the climactic moment, hears Obi-Wan Kenobi's voice telling him to "Feel the Force, Luke!" Luke turns off the high-tech guidance system of his space fighter-bomber and uses his intuition to guide him to his target.

But Krauthammer and his ilk have a different definition of Force: That Which Militates Against Uncertainty. The pundit waxes nostalgic for the post-9/11 shock and awe, when our first instinct was to name an enemy and lash back, as one, in any way we could:

Do you remember 9/11? How you felt? The moral clarity of that day and the days thereafter? Just days after 9/11, on this very page, [TIME essayist] Lance Morrow wrote a brilliant, searing affirmation of right against wrong, good against evil.

For one brief, shining moment, a reeling America was heavy into control and certainty, unity and uniformity. We ought to return to that spirit, Krauthammer says. Thus, in the Krauthammer worldview, it is wrong for us to leave abortion decisions in the uncertain hands of individual women. Wrong to keep a high wall of separation between church and state, making God's status among us less than certain. Wrong to question our president's own moral cocksureness in waging his war in Iraq.

I'll certainly never expect to encounter Charles Krauthammer on the Middle Path!