the middle path of compassion
When we witness suffering in the world, something in us naturally wants to respond. We want to fix, to heal, to help. It comes from a pure place, from the tenderness of the heart that cannot bear to see pain. And yet, even in our best intentions, we can easily be swept into the polarities of “for” and “against.”
We take sides, we choose camps, we fight for peace, and in doing so, we may unknowingly feed the very divisions we long to dissolve.
Yoga invites us to see this with gentle honesty. It asks us not to abandon compassion, but to embody it differently, not through the extremes of preference or aversion, but through the quiet steadiness of the middle path.
Each of us walks our own karmic journey. Each soul meets the precise experiences it needs in order to awaken. And while the suffering of others can break our hearts open, we must remember that every being has their own path toward remembrance, their own pace, their own unfolding. We cannot walk it for them. What we can do is walk our own with awareness.
When we rest in inner peace, our actions, even the smallest ones, are infused with clarity rather than reactivity. When we move from that stillness, what we offer the world carries a different vibration: it does not divide, it does not demand, it does not impose. It simply is.
True compassion is not about fighting against the shadows of the world. It is about seeing them clearly, holding them with tenderness, and remaining anchored in peace amidst them. When we become that peace, we become a quiet force of transformation, not by convincing others, but by embodying what we wish to see.
As long as we dwell in the camps of “for” or “against,” we remain caught in duality. Even when our cause is noble, we strengthen the sense of separation, the illusion that there is an us and a them, right and wrong, good and bad. Yoga teaches us to look deeper: to move beyond the duality of sides and see the shared essence beneath.
So rather than asking, What should I fight for?, perhaps the deeper question is, How can I embody peace so fully that it becomes impossible for conflict to arise within me?
Because that is where real change begins, not in protest, but in presence.
Not in reaction, but in remembrance.
Not in taking sides, but in standing firmly in the center of being.
When we walk that middle path, awake, compassionate, balanced, our very presence becomes medicine.
Not by doing, but by being.
Not by talking like a Buddha, but by quietly being one.
*Dutch
Wat betekent het om vrede te belichamen, midden in de wereld?
Daar duiken we samen dieper in tijdens Yoga in het Leven - een ontdekkingsreis van bewustwording, harmonie, en de herinnering van ons eigen essentie. Een reis in het belichamen van de wijsheid dat de yoga filosofie kan brengen midden in het dagelijks leven.