Middle Way

• 1. Introduction

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  The Middle Way is one of the most fundamental teachings of Buddhism, a doctrine built not on compromise but on a precise kind of refusal. The Buddha, according to the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, delivered this teaching as his very first discourse after his awakening. He was addressing five ascetics, men who had joined him in the practice of severe self-mortification before his enlightenment. His opening move was to set aside both of the paths they knew: extreme indulgence and extreme self-denial.

  The term "Middle Way" carries two distinct meanings in Buddhist teaching. The first is a practical guide to spiritual life, steering clear of sensual indulgence on one side and harsh asceticism on the other. The second meaning is philosophical, describing how the Buddha's teaching approaches the deepest questions of existence and personal identity without falling into either eternalism or nihilism.

  Both meanings trace back to a single move: avoiding extremes. But what the Middle Way actually points toward is not some mild midpoint between two bad options. As scholar Y. Karunadasa notes, the middle path "does not mean moderation or a compromise between the two extremes." It means, as the ancient text states, "without entering either of the two extremes." That distinction will matter more and more as this teaching unfolds across centuries and continents.

• 2. Two Extremes, One Path

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  Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. That is how the Buddha opens the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the discourse the Buddhist tradition regards as the first teaching after his awakening. He then names the extremes plainly: addiction to sensual pleasures, described as "low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable"; and addiction to self-mortification, described as "painful, unworthy, and unprofitable."

  Indologist Johannes Bronkhorst has argued that the first extreme does not refer to a specific religious movement. It describes what ordinary people do. The second extreme, however, is pointed. It addresses ascetics who used self-denial as a deliberate religious technique. The Buddhist texts specifically depict and criticize Jain ascetics as practitioners of this kind of extreme self-mortification. Early Buddhist sources also describe the Buddha himself practicing those same ascetic methods before his awakening, and then abandoning them because they did not work.

  The Anguttara Nikaya maps these two extremes under the labels of the "addicted path" and the "scorching path." The scorching path, the text describes in concrete detail: going naked, restricting food in various ways, wearing rough clothing, tearing out hair and beard, constantly standing and refusing seats, maintaining the squatting posture, and lying on mats of thorns. The middle path, by contrast, is described by enumerating the thirty-seven aids to awakening. One path torments the body; the other cultivates the mind.

• 3. Teaching by the Middle

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  The Kaccānagotta-sutta introduces a second formulation of the Middle Way, one that operates not as a guide to practice but as a response to metaphysical questions. The sutta records the teaching that "the Tathagata teaches by the middle way" (majjhena tathāgato dhammaṃ deseti), which means navigating between eternalism and annihilationism.

  Eternalism, as Bhikkhu Bodhi explains, is the view that there is an indestructible and eternal self, whether individual or universal. It can also mean the idea that the world is maintained by a permanent being or entity, like God or some other eternal metaphysical Absolute. The risk in this view, according to the teaching, is that it leads to grasping at the five aggregates, which are impermanent and empty of a self.

  Annihilationism takes the opposite position: that a person is utterly destroyed at death with nothing surviving. The problem here, Bodhi notes, is that it leads to nihilism, and specifically to ethical nihilism. If nothing survives and nothing is connected, the motivation for moral conduct collapses.

  Dependent origination is the doctrine that steers between these two. Bodhi describes what it teaches as follows: "existence is constituted by a current of conditioned phenomena devoid of a metaphysical self yet continuing on from birth to birth as long as the causes that sustain it remain effective." Scholar David Kalupahana links the two extremes in the Kaccānagotta-sutta to the doctrine of permanent existence found in the Upanishads on one side, and the doctrine of non-existence at death held by the materialist Carvaka school on the other.

• 4. The Self and Continuity

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  SN 12.35 records a monk asking the Buddha a question about the twelve links of dependent origination: "What now is aging-and-death, and for whom is there this aging-and-death?" The Buddha's response refuses both ways of framing the question. Whether someone asks what aging-and-death is, or asks who it belongs to, both questions carry the same false assumption.

  The sutta outlines two views the Buddha rejects. If one holds that "the soul and the body are the same," there is no living of the holy life. If one holds that "the soul is one thing, the body is another," there is also no living of the holy life. The Tathagata teaches instead by the middle: "With birth as condition, aging-and-death."

  The Aññatarabrāhmaṇasutta (SN 12.46) carries this further by addressing karma and experience. Two additional extreme views appear here. The first: "The person who does the deed experiences the result." The second: "One person does the deed and another experiences the result." The Timbarukasutta frames the same problem through feeling: if the feeling and the one who feels it are identical, pleasure and pain are self-made; if they are entirely separate, pleasure and pain are made by another. The Buddha rejects both.

  As Rupert Gethin puts it, personal continuity in early Buddhism is explained through the particular way that the various phenomena making up a sentient being are causally connected. There is a real connectedness, but it is not the connectedness of an unchanging self. Gethin writes it plainly: if that connectedness is denied, the result is annihilationism; if that connectedness is understood as an unchanging self, the result is eternalism. The middle way is that there is only the connectedness, only dependent arising.

• 5. Nagarjuna and the Madhyamaka

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  Nagarjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, known in translation as "The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way," refers directly to the Kaccānagotta Sutta in its fifteenth chapter. Nagarjuna was the founder of the Madhyamaka school, which takes its name from the Middle Way itself. He was followed by major figures including Aryadeva, Buddhapalita, Bhavaviveka, and Chandrakirti.

  In the fifteenth chapter, Nagarjuna deconstructs the ideas of existence, non-existence, and intrinsic nature (svabhāva), arguing that these concepts are incoherent and incompatible with dependent origination. The text states: "'It exists' is an eternalist view; 'It does not exist' is an annihilationist idea. Therefore the wise one should not have recourse to either existence or nonexistence." According to Mark Siderits and Shoryu Katsura, the two extremes for Nagarjuna are: the view that things exist having intrinsic nature, and the view that the lack of intrinsic nature means things are utterly unreal.

  Aryadeva, a student of Nagarjuna, wrote the Four Hundred Stanzas on the Middle Way, which explains Nagarjuna's work and adds refutations of non-Buddhist systems. Buddhapalita interpreted Nagarjuna by drawing out the unwanted consequences of opponents' positions without putting forward a positive thesis of his own, an approach that became known as Prasangika Madhyamaka. Bhaviveka took a different approach: inspired by the Buddhist logician Dignaga, he argued it was necessary to use syllogistic arguments to prove the Madhyamaka view, and this became known as Svatantrika Madhyamaka. Chandrakirti later defended Buddhapalita's position and critiqued Bhaviveka. His text Madhyamakavatara, "Entering the Middle Way," explains Nagarjuna's work from the Prasangika standpoint in its sixth chapter.

• 6. Diverging Schools

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  In Yogacara Buddhism, the Middle Way takes a different form. The Yogacara school examines emptiness through what it calls the three natures (svabhava), and argues that there is something that exists: an empty and purely mental stream of dependent arising. The Bodhisattvabhumi makes the point directly, arguing that it is only logical to speak of emptiness if there is something that is empty.

  Yogacara philosophers, including Asanga, criticized Madhyamaka for tipping into nihilism. Asanga's argument was blunt: "If nothing is real, there cannot be any ideas. Someone who holds this view is a nihilist." Yogacara holds that consciousness exists, though in a dependent and empty way, and that ultimate reality is beyond all dualities, including self and other, physical and non-physical, internal and external.

  In Tibetan Buddhism, the debate between interpretations of Madhyamaka runs through the major schools. The Gelug school upholds the Rangtong position developed by Je Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), which holds that emptiness is an absolute negation: everything, including Buddhahood and emptiness itself, is empty of inherent existence. The conventional existence of the world is not negated, only the essentialist superimposition of intrinsic nature. By contrast, the Shentong position, held by non-Gelug schools and associated with figures such as Dölpopa Sherab Gyaltsen (1292-1361), holds that ultimate reality is only empty of what is impermanent and conditioned, not empty of its own true nature. In this system, Buddhahood is an ultimately real self filled with infinite Buddha qualities. Gorampa (1429-1489) represents yet another interpretation, an anti-realist reading in which all phenomena, including conventional everyday reality, are negated as conceptual fabrications.

• 7. Chan and Tendai Readings

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  In the Tendai school, the Middle Way is understood as a synthesis: the thesis that all things are empty (sunyata) and the antithesis that all things have phenomenal existence are held together rather than dissolved into each other.

  In Chan Buddhism, the Middle Way describes a state of awareness free from the one-sidedness that takes either extreme of any polarity as objective reality. Chapter ten of the Platform Sutra records Huineng giving instructions on how to teach the Dharma. Huineng enumerates thirty-six basic oppositions of consciousness, then explains that each question should be answered by invoking the paired opposite: if someone asks about the worldly, use the paired opposite of the saintly; if about the saintly, use the paired opposite of the worldly. "The mutual causation of the Way of dualities," he says, "gives birth to the meaning of the Middle Way."

  In the Theravada tradition, the SN commentary sums up the middle teaching in terms of an absence: the formula of dependent origination shows how effects arise through causes and cease when those causes cease, "but no agent or experiencer is described." Ajahns Amaro and Pasanno, reflecting on the Kaccānagotta-sutta, argue it describes a method of meditation more than a philosophical position, and that it closely matches the practice of vipassana insight meditation: calm observation of arising experience, seeing all patterns through the lens of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and not-self, and, finally, the remainderless relinquishment of all experience. The Madhyamakālaṃkāra, "The Ornament of the Middle Way," by Santaraksita, represents yet another attempt to synthesize the Yogacara and Madhyamaka approaches, a line of thought continued by his student Kamalasila in "The Stages of Meditation of Madhyamika."