Civilization domesticates us, subduing the wild and natural in us with virtue, benevolence, rectitude, and rites. Civilization seduces us with the pleasures of safety and comfort. Yet the safer and more comfortable we are, the more neurotic we become. This is not only true of humans, but also of our 'pets' - the animals we have domesticated. That's a sweeping statement which I'll leave for each to verify through personal experience (frankly my list of observations feels endless).

Why do we end up neurotic? We evolved to interact with nature in the 'wild', not in a civilized setting. Thus, those instinctive characteristics which serve the 'wild animal' well, express themselves in often neurotic and self destructive ways in the 'domesticated animal' - especially in a domestic setting. For example, cows given unlimited access to farm feed will eat themselves to death. This doesn't happen when cows graze on simple grasses in the field.

Why do we maximize safety and comfort to the extreme? We can't help it. As animals, we are driven by the survival instinct to maximize both. The fact that we believe we are rational and in control of our actions only blinds us to this - our original nature.

What can we do? Some renounce the safety and comforts of their culture and live an ascetic life. Buddha's personal history is instructive. Buddha tried this initially, albeit in the extreme, and found it to be a by-path. The other extreme, giving ourselves over to safety and comfort, while promising happiness, delivers sorrow. As Buddha put it, "pleasures are the bait, the result is pain". Buddha proposed a 'middle path' as one solution - neither chase or flee pleasure or pain. Sounds simple enough, eh?

How can we actually do it? Alas, through ignorance we always end up on one extreme and then eventually, the other. We binge and then purge. Thus, our corrective measures must, of necessity, flow from a personal understanding of what is happening when it is happening. Thus, deal with a thing while it is still nothing; keep a thing in order before disorder sets in. That requires keeping watch, moment to moment.

Not wishing to be one among many like jade [binging], nor to be aloof like stone [purging] can only occur if we are aware of what's happening. It is that contemporaneous knowing that tempers our actions. If contemporaneous knowing is absent, our pendulum will swing too far one way and then the other.