It is very much difficult for you to remain undecided on any matter for a long time. You will have to decide either affirmatively or negatively on any matter coming before you – maybe you would like to postpone the decision for the time being but it is the most impossible thing for the mind, is to remain in the middle, to remain balanced. To move from one thing to its opposite is the easiest because to move from one polarity to another is the nature of the mind.
Really, it is very much easy for a person, who overeats, to go on a fast. It looks illogical, because we think that a person who is obsessed with food cannot go on a fast. But not, only a person who is obsessed with food can fast, because fasting is the same obsession in the opposite direction. You are not really changing yourself. You are still obsessed with food. Before you were overeating; now you are hungry – but the mind remains focused on food from the opposite extreme.
Our mind is just a clock’s pendulum. The pendulum goes to the right, then it moves to the left, then again to the right and again to the left; the clock’s working depends on this movement. If it stays in the middle, the clock stops. And when it moves to the right, we think it is only going to the right, but at the same time it is gathering momentum to go the left, the more energy it gathers to move to the left, and vice versa.
In the same way, thinking means momentum. The mind starts arranging for the opposite. When you love a person, you can have reasons to hate him also. That’s why only friends can become enemies. You cannot suddenly become an enemy unless you have first become a friend. Only lovers can quarrel and fight, because unless you love, how can you hate? Unless you have moved far to the extreme left, how can you move to the right? If you love someone, you may hate him also. If you don’t have love for him, why should you go in opposite direction, to hate him?
Lord Buddha taught eight disciplines, and with each discipline he used the word right. He said: Right effort, because it is very easy to move from action to inaction, from waking to sleep, but to remain in the middle is difficult. When Buddha used the word right he was saying: don’t move to the opposite, just stay in the middle. Right food – he never said to fast. Don’t indulge in too much eating and don’t indulge in fasting. He said: right food. Right food means standing in the middle.
When you are standing in the middle you are not gathering any momentum. And this is the beauty of it – a man who is not gathering any momentum to move anywhere, can be at ease with himself, can be at home. But for progress, for your contentment, you will have to decide some course of action finally on the matter standing before you.