Dichotomies have a tendency to hide the most important part…
Dichotomies have a tendency to hide the most important part. Turning a dichotomy into a trichotomy usually reveals what is hidden and leads to a deeper understanding.
Replies
example?
Body-mind dualism hides the soul. The left-right paradigm hides freedom. Good and evil hides the equilibrium marked by the narrow middle path which has pitfalls on both sides.
Body-mind dualism implies that the mind is the higher part of humans, the part that differentiates us from animals. The rational part in contrast to the irrational body. This leads straight to the critical flaw in Western philosophy: the idea that the mind is our friend. Anyone who has spent a lot of time observing and studying the mind knows that this isn't true. The mind is a deceiver and only when it has been tamed and reined in by the soul does it become a friend.
Imagine a cross. On the left side of the horizontal line you have the mind, on the right side the body. The entire vertical line is the steep and narrow middle-path of the soul.
At the beginning of the path the soul is under the horizontal line, creating an upside-down triangle. Body and mind rule.
The work liberates the soul and makes it rise. When it reaches the horizontal body-mind line, the triangle flips and now stands on its base.
Now the soul towers over mind and body in the middle, holding the equilibrium. At the beginning of the path it was buried below the body-mind line, allowing body and mind (the beast) to do as it pleases, which means essentially the body looking for immediate gratification and the mind being its apologist.
