October 25, 2026

Find The Right Pitch

And what do you think, Sona: when the strings of your vina were too taut, was your vina in tune and playable? No, lord. And when the strings of your vina were too loose, was your vina in tune and playable? No, lord. And when the strings of your vina were neither too taut nor too loose, but tuned to be right on pitch, was your vina in tune and playable? Yes, lord. In the same way, Sona, over-aroused persistence leads to restlessness, overly slack persistence leads to laziness. Thus you should determine the right pitch for your persistence, attune the pitches of the five faculties to that, and there pick up your theme.

Sona Kolivisa was a monk who practiced walking meditation so fiercely that his feet bled, yet he felt no closer to awakening and began to think of leaving the robes to return to a comfortable lay life. The Buddha came to him and, knowing Sona had once been a skilled vina player, asked him about tuning strings before offering this teaching. The passage shows that a string pulled too tight snaps and one left too loose makes no music; only the middle tension lets the instrument play. In the same way, straining too hard in practice breeds restlessness while easing off too much breeds laziness. The Middle Way in this tradition is not a fixed compromise but a living calibration, adjusted again and again, between extremes of force and slackness.

A principle of Eastern Wisdom: The Middle Way →