“The way upward and the way downward is one and the same.”
—Heraclitus
(Epigraphs to T.S. Eliot’s poem “Burnt Norton”)
Table of contents
Two wheels, one escape: why the radical middle way is our best bet
Imagine life as a game show you didn’t sign up for. A giant wheel spins, and suddenly you’re promoted, dumped, rich, broke, adored, ignored. Congratulations—you’re a contestant on The Wheel of Fortune. But not the TV show. This is Boethius’ medieval metaphor: Fortune has her wheel, and she couldn’t care less where it drops you.
Now swap Boethius for a Buddhist monk. He’ll show you another wheel: the Wheel of Samsara. Same spinning, but bigger stakes. Instead of “win a car, lose a car,” it’s “get reborn as a god, fall back as a hungry ghost, repeat.” Not exactly the jackpot.
Different continents, different centuries—but both images ask the same question: Why do we suffer, and is there any way off the ride?
Fortune’s wheel: a medieval reality check
Boethius, writing his Consolation of Philosophy in the sixth century, knew what it felt like to be on the rim. One moment he was a celebrated Roman statesman, the next he was in prison awaiting execution. His Lady Philosophy told him: Stop whining, you knew Fortune’s game. She spins, people rise, people fall. What did you expect?
Her point: if your happiness depends on Fortune, you’re toast. Everything she hands you—wealth, reputation, success—can be snatched away in the next spin. The only stable joy, Boethius tells us through her, is found in what Fortune cannot touch: the eternal Good.
Take away the theological packaging, and the lesson still works. Today Fortune looks like markets, likes, followers, or your boss’s mood. Ride the wheel if you must, but don’t confuse its prizes for real happiness. If you tie your peace of mind to what Fortune spins, you’re guaranteed to be dragged with the wheel.
Samsara’s wheel: the bigger picture
Half a world away, long before Boethius, Buddhists were already talking in wheels. The bhavachakra, or Wheel of Life, depicts all beings caught in samsara—the endless cycle of craving, suffering, and rebirth. Unlike Fortune’s arbitrary spin, this wheel turns according to law: karma and ignorance drive it. At the center are three animals representing the poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion. Around the rim are the twelve links of dependent origination, mapping how ignorance generates suffering again and again.
Here too the message is that worldly highs and lows are not the point. Even a rebirth among gods is just another spin of the wheel, doomed to descend. What matters is insight: seeing the impermanence and emptiness of the whole cycle. Liberation is not about winning a better seat on the wheel, but no longer mistaking the ride for reality. Nirvana means release from unnecessary suffering. Not because life magically stops, but because craving and clinging no longer bind. This is the key to inner peace.
When you realize Fortune only rents you illusions, you stop fearing the repossession.
The shared insight: don’t bet on the rim
Put them both together, and the family resemblance becomes clear.
- Boethius says: don’t stake your happiness on what turns—Fortune will betray you.
- Buddhism says: don’t wager your happiness on the wheel at all—it is turning by its very nature.
- Both say: If your peace depends on what turns, you’ll be dragged around forever.
The difference is scale. Boethius deals with reversals in one life—wealth lost, friends gone, honor turned to disgrace. Buddhism zooms out to the existential scale. But both identify the same trap: mistaking the unstable for the ultimate. The rim is a losing bet, stealing your serenity and leaving you in agony.
Eternal good meets eternal now
Boethius, as a good Christian, says the way out is God—the eternal, unchanging Good. But if you peel back the theology, the “eternal” need not mean a distant heaven. It can mean what is always here: the present itself. Not tomorrow’s fortune, not yesterday’s loss, but stillness in the endless flow in which all turning happens.
Buddhism already points this way. Nirvana is not some far-off paradise; it’s the extinguishing of clinging in the very moment you let go. When you drop the need for the wheel to give you anything, you discover a strange kind of freedom: life still spins, but you’re no longer dizzy.
Why nondual recognition is the game-changer
But a stiff upper lip won’t do to step off the wheel, whether it’s Fortune’s roulette or samsara’s carnival ride. You need a shift in vision. That shift is nondual recognition, and few expressed it with more daring clarity than Adi Shankara (8th century CE), the great philosopher of Advaita Vedanta.
Shankara said reality can be seen in three strokes, like turning a kaleidoscope until the picture suddenly snaps into place:
- From the standpoint of elimination: Everything that seems different is absolutely without reality. This deserves a moment of contemplation: He means it quite literally—and he’s right, but it’s a colossal epiphany. What seems different from our deepest awareness is unreal! So what remains is our deepest awareness: Brahman. Hence Shankara speaks of “only-self” rather than Buddhism’s “no-self.” Both point to the same insight.
- From the standpoint of illusion: Everything that appears in the “sameness” that is “me” is an illusion: “I alone am the Truth.”
- From the standpoint of resolution: resolving the effect into the cause. Everything that seems separate from me is myself.
All the spinning multiplicity, the whole crowded carnival of people and their stories, is nothing but Brahman in disguise. So when you run toward it, it keeps receding. No wonder we never quite “arrive.”
Different languages, same punchline: stop betting on the rim. And when you stop, something else becomes audible—like realizing, in the middle of all the carnival noise, that there was always a quieter music playing underneath. Once you hear that, the juggler’s fireballs are dazzling, but they’re no longer dangerous. And that moment of playful clarity is already the taste of liberation.
The hub and the rim
A wheel’s rim spins wildly, its hub more quietly, and the axle never moves at all. The rim is where we usually live—success and failure, gain and loss, craving and fear. The hub brushes closer to the still point: the present that isn’t going anywhere.
Boethius helps us stop mistaking the rim’s prizes for true happiness. Buddhism helps us stop mistaking the rim itself for our identity. Together they show the deeper move: notice the hub. The hub is the middle way that lightens suffering. Rest there, lean closer, and hear it whisper the one bet Fortune can’t rig.
Reason and awareness: two keys to the same door
Boethius emphasizes reason: think it through, see that external goods are unstable, and orient yourself to the integrity of love instead. Buddhism emphasizes awareness: notice impermanence directly, see through clinging, and wake up.
Reason clears the fog; awareness dissolves the wheel. Combine them, and you get a philosophy that both makes sense and makes you free: Rational Nondualism. Reason, if understood and applied judiciously, greatly reduces suffering. It supports the revelation of our nondual nature and the identification of toxic desires, as discussed in my previous post about happiness.
Why it matters now
We’re still spinning. Fortune today looks like job titles, follower counts, crypto balances, or whether the algorithm smiled at you. Samsara looks like scrolling at 2 a.m., promising yourself just one more dopamine hit. The wheels haven’t gone anywhere.
But the way out hasn’t changed either. You don’t need to stop life from turning—that’s impossible. You just need to realize your happiness was never supposed to live on the rim.
The still point of the turning world
T.S. Eliot nailed it in his poem Burnt Norton:
“At the still point of the turning world … there the dance is.”
That line could just as well have been written by Boethius or the Buddhist monk. The wheel turns, but there is a place—the present—that’s not going anywhere. To discover it is not to escape life, but to live it without being enslaved by its spin. The radical middle way is now, unconditionally. It’s where you’ll find your truest rhythm.
Your best bet is abiding in Brahman.
The takeaway
- The Wheel of Fortune warns: don’t mistake the prizes for happiness.
- The Wheel of Samsara warns: don’t mistake the ride for what you are.
- Both point to the same discovery: the still present, where nothing needs to turn for joy to be whole.
Eliot’s “still point” isn’t a pause button for the world, but the presence where the turning and the stillness meet. And freedom is not walking off the dance floor, but finally hearing the music that has carried you all along.
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