The Practice of Dynamic Balance 

The word “balance” suggests a middle position between two opposites. Balance forms a fundamental part of our existence. Without the ability to balance, we would not be able to walk upright or move around in a directed way to create our lives. But we do not often appreciate that balance can only exist with wobbling. Take, as an example, riding a bike. Without being able to move the handlebars from side to side we would not be able to keep upright. And a tightrope walker would not be able to maintain her balance on the rope unless free to wobble from side to side. It is therefore true to say that balance needs a certain degree of instability. In other words, balance is a dynamic, not a static condition. We need to have the freedom to wobble to keep our balance. 

Balance as the Middle Way 

Most people think that Buddhism is a religion, and so they expect buddhist teachings to be spiritual in nature. But the teachings of Zen master Dogen are in fact an integration of the spiritual and the material; in this respect Buddhism is not a religion but a way of living. The buddhist way has traditionally been described as “the middle way” from the Pali term majjhena dhammam, which literally means “doctrine by the middle.” The phrase is taken from a discourse of the Buddha in the early Pali sutras. [1]

Balance and Sunyata 

One of Buddhism’s central teachings is the state of sunyata, a Sanskrit term often translated as “emptiness.” I would like to introduce you to a radically different interpretation of this term. The word sunyata is an abstract noun formed from the adjective sunya, which the Monier-Williams Sanskrit dictionary gives as meaning “empty, void, hollow, barren, desolate.” However, in Indian arithmetic it was used to mean “nought, a cipher.” The word “cipher” is from the Arabic sifr (Medieval Latin zephirum), meaning zero or empty, itself a translation of the Sanskrit sunya. The word “cipher” was in common use until 200 years ago, when the word “zero,” a derivation from the Latin zephirum, was introduced in Mediaeval Venice. So another acceptable meaning of sunya is zero, in the sense of neither positive, nor negative. 

Balance as Zero 

“Zero is neither positive nor negative, but the narrowest of no-man’s land between those two kingdoms. Yet our analogy-driven minds, ever eager to read expressions on neutral faces, seize on its emptiness and make our powers and portents there.” [2]

Taking sunyata as referring to a condition which is neither positive nor negative, we can relate this to the zero position between opposites. The zero between love and hate, the zero between good and bad. The zero between left and right. We can think, for instance, of the tightrope walker as attempting to maintain the zero position between left and right as she walks along the rope. We can illustrate this in a diagram like this: 

The line waves backwards and forwards around zero as the tightrope walker wobbles along the rope. Without wobbling, the tightrope walker cannot maintain her balance. 

Balance between Opposites 

“Opposites are an illusion of language. Something and nothing… are equally false substantives.” [2]

We can illustrate this balance between opposites in a similar way for many situations, both physical and psychological. For example, mood swings are often cyclic like this: 

We may feel depressed at the thought of work on Monday morning, and then slowly recover and begin to feel excited as the weekend approaches. Some people set up a habitual mood pattern like this, with weekends being exciting and workdays being depressing. Again, we can see that our mood wobbles about a zero line, in which we are relatively calm and neutral. It is easy to see how impossible it is to keep ourselves exactly on this “zero line” in reality. We can no more go through life in a calm and neutral state than the tightrope walker can walk along her rope without wobbling. But the important thing here is to see that there is a position between opposites, and that this “neutral position” is in fact dynamic. That is, it is only possible to wobble around this balance or zero point, it is only possible to attain this balance by wobbling around it. I want to call this activity “dynamic balance” here. 

Balance contains imbalance

Choreographer to ballet student while teaching a difficult routine:

“Have pleasure in that imbalance, let yourself go… Use the imbalance.

Balance is a set of imbalances, even in life.

Dancing is the best school of life.

One that is always balanced is unhappy.

That’s why there must be a lot of imbalances.” [3]

Notes:

[1] Ete te ubho ante anupagamma majjena tathaagato dhammam deseti: Without approaching either extreme, the Tathagata teaches you the doctrine by the middle. Kaccaayanagotta Sutta, Samutta Nikaya 2.17.

[2] The Nothing That Is – A Natural History of Zero, Robert Kaplan, p. 190, OUP 1999. 

[3] From Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, a gripping coming-of-age story set within the walls of the National Conservatory Dance School in Lisbon, Portugal. You can watch the full video here.