As soon as we hear the term ‘middle path’, we think of Gautama Buddha. It describes a path that shuns both extreme asceticism and extreme luxury. The Buddha was born a prince and brought up amidst riches. When he grew up, he wanted to learn about ‘real life’, which was not to be found inside the palace. He left everything and became a monk. In his spiritual quest, he subjected himself to extreme suffering in the hope of achieving enlightenment. He did not attain it and nearly died in the process. Thus, he discovered that truth does not lie in extremes, but somewhere in between. There is a story from Greek mythology that illustrates the principle of the 'middle path' through the story of Icarus.
Everyone remembers that Icarus fell because he flew too high and the wax in his wings melted, but the story behind this episode is more nuanced. Icarus’s father, Daedalus, was a master craftsman and architect imprisoned by King Minos of Crete. Icarus was imprisoned along with him. Daedalus once hatched a plan to escape. Since Crete was an island, it was impossible to escape by land or by sea, as the waters were guarded by Minos’s soldiers. He decided to escape through the air.
He began by arranging feathers of different sizes in a regular order, with waxed linen cords holding them together. He bent the joined feathers into perfect curves to resemble the wings of birds. After his work was finished, he fastened the wings to his body, balanced himself and sailed through the air like a bird. He then descended to earth and made a smaller pair for his son, Icarus.
‘Always fly, my dear son, in the middle course,’ he said. ‘If you fly too low, your wings may become so dampened by the sea air that they will grow heavy and you may fall into the waves. If you mount too high and go very close to the sun, your feathers may suddenly catch fire. Fly between sea and sky and always follow my course.’
The advice that his father gave Icarus was sensible, and if Icarus had avoided the extremes of flying too low or too high, they would have escaped safely. However, when they rose into the air and crossed several islands, Icarus grew overconfident and wanted to soar much higher than the height at which his father was flying. He flew higher and higher, but soon encountered the danger that his father had predicted. His proximity to the sun weakened the wax holding his wings together, and they detached from his body. Not long after abandoning the middle path, Icarus fell into the sea and died.