The Principle of Balance is a foundational principle of life. It appears in every spiritual tradition. Tamas, Rajas and Sattva in Hinduism, Yin-Yang in Taoism, the middle path in Buddhism and the Tree of Life in Judaism all point to the principle of balance. In Yoga, the Ida, Pingala and Sushumna nadis point to the state of Balance.
The principle of balance can be succinctly stated as the Oneness of Opposites.
What do we mean by opposites here? Love and hate, myself and other, happiness and sadness, good and bad, success and failure, past and future, inactivity and overactivity, liberal and conservative. Literally, everything in the world can be seen as a pair of opposites.
Balance is the perception and experience of
the Oneness of Opposites
What do we mean by Oneness? Oneness is the ability to see the opposites as part of the whole. Does it mean we deny the presence of opposites? No, just that we have the ability to step back and see the dance of the opposites.
An analogy will make this easier to understand. As human beings going about our day, we see our surroundings on this earth teeming with activity. There is a tremendous diversity of people, plants and animals. The planet is alive with constant activity – the bustling winds, the rippling oceans. A lot is happening.
Now imagine looking at the earth from space. You can see the earth as one – one family. Such richness and complexity and yet with an expansive perspective, we see a Oneness. This is the Oneness we are talking about. Just like with this example, it is easy to forget this Oneness in our day-to-day lives.
The principle of balance has far reaching consequences because it operates on every level of existence – physical, energetic, mental and every scale of time and space.
A few examples:
Physical – if we bend too far forward or too far backward, we will fall; the movement of a pendulum, rest and work, birth and death
Energetic – potential and kinetic energy, attraction and repulsion, inhale and exhale
Mental – love and hate, good and bad, attachment and aversion, socialism and capitalism
If we don’t understand the principle of balance, it is very easy to unbalance us. As an example, let us say that we are desperate for money. In other words, we have an unbalanced attitude towards money and crave it. This makes us an easy target for exploitation by others. This is how people fall for Ponzi schemes and other snake oil. Of course, the perpetrator of the Ponzi scheme has their own unbalanced attitude towards money as well.
If we want clarity, peace and worldly success, cultivating balance is essential. Without balance, we are often thrown into suffering. Being able to see the oneness of opposites, we will be unfazed by the opposites. We will understand that everything is part of the great dance of life. Freed from fear, this understanding will infuse our life with beauty.