Right or Left?

A meditation teacher requires solid meditation experience upon which to base her instructions. She observes her student coming towards where she currently is in her practice. When the student is heading for the ditch on his left, she advises 'Go right'; when he overcorrects & heads for the ditch on the right, she advises 'Go left'. To the student who does not yet have a clear overview of the path, the instructions may sound arbitrary or even contradictory. But the teacher is just trying to keep the student on the path.

The path is the middle way or centeredness. The ditches are the extremes of conditioning. We're used to jumping excitedly from one ditch to the other, never quite feeling at home. It takes dedicated training to learn to stabilize in the center, where authenticity resides.