Monday, November 22, 2010

Middle Way in Buddhism


Title: The Middle Way of Buddhist Practice
Date: 23 November 2010
Time:: 5.30PM Vietnam 9.30PM Sydney 11.30AM Paris
Teacher: Venerable Thich Minh Tam



UNMINDING MIND, KEEP IN THE MIDDLE – UNTIL. KEEP IN THE MIDDLE…
Buddha developed his whole technique of meditation on this sutra. His path is known as MAJJHIM NIKAYA – the middle path. Buddha says, ”Remain always in the middle – in everything.”
One Prince Shrown took initiation, Buddha initiated him into sannyas. That prince was a rare man, and when he took sannyas, when he was initiated, his whole kingdom was just amazed. The kingdom couldn’t believe it, the people couldn’t believe that Prince Shrown could become a sannyasin. No one had ever even imagined it, as he was a man of this world – indulging in everything, indulging to the extreme. Wine and women were his whole milieu.
Then suddenly Buddha came to the town, and the prince went to see him for a DARSHAN – A spiritual encounter. He fell at Buddha’s feet and he said, ”Initiate me. I will leave this world.” Those who had come with him were not even aware… this was so sudden. So they asked Buddha, ”What is happening? This is a miracle. Shrown is not that type of man, and he has lived very luxuriously.
Up to now we couldn’t even imagine that Shrown is going to take sannyas, so what has happened? You have done something.”
Buddha said, ”I have not done anything. Mind can move easily from one extreme to the other. That is the way of the mind – to move from one extreme to another. So Shrown is not doing something new. It is to be expected. Because you do not know the law of the mind, that is why you are so much taken aback.”
The mind moves from one extreme to another, that is the way of the mind. So it happens every day: a person who was mad after wealth renounces everything, becomes a naked fakir. We think, ”What a miracle!” But it is nothing – just the ordinary law. A person who was not mad after wealth cannot be expected to renounce, because only from one extreme can you move to another – just like a pendulum, from one extreme to the other.
So a person who was after wealth, mad after wealth, will become mad against it, but the madness will remain – that is the mind. A man who lived just for sex may become a celibate, may move into isolation, but the madness will remain. Before he was living only for sex, now he will be living only against sex – but the attitude, the approach, remains the same.
So a BRAHMACHARI, a celibate, is not really beyond sex; his whole mind is sex-oriented. He is against, but not beyond. The way of beyond is always in the middle, it is never at the extreme. So Buddha says, ”This could have been expected. No miracle has happened. This is how mind works.”
Shrown became a beggar, a sannyasin. He became a BHIKKHU, a monk, and soon other disciples of Buddha observed that he was moving to the other extreme. Buddha never asked anyone to be naked, but Shrown became naked. Buddha was not for nakedness. He said, ”That is just another extreme.”
There are persons who live for clothes as if that is their life, and there are other persons who become naked – but both believe in the same thing. Buddha never taught nakedness, but Shrown became naked. He was the only disciple of Buddha who was naked. He became very, very self-torturing.
Buddha allowed one meal every day for the sannyasins, but Shrown would take only one meal on alternate days. He became lean and thin. While all the other disciples would sit for meditation under trees, in the shade, he would never sit under any tree. He would always remain in the hot sun. He was a beautiful man and he had a very lovely body, but within six months no one could recognize that he was the same man. He became ugly, dark, black, burned.
Buddha went to Shrown one night and asked him, ”Shrown, I have heard that when you were a prince, before initiation, you used to play on a VEENA, a sitar, and you were a great musician. So I have come to ask you one question. If the strings of the veena are very loose, what happens?”
Shrown said, ”If the strings are very loose, then no music is possible.”
And then Buddha said, ”And if the strings are very tight, too tight, then what happens?” Shrown said, ”Then too music cannot be produced. The strings must be in the middle – neither loose nor tight, but just exactly in the middle.”
Shrown said, ”It is easy to play the veena, but only a master can set these strings right, in the middle.”
So Buddha said, ”This much I have to say to you, after observing you for the last six months – that in life also the music comes only when the strings are neither loose nor tight, but just in the middle.
So to renounce is easy, but only a master knows how to be in the middle. So Shrown, be a master, and let these strings of life be just in the middle – in everything. Do not go to this extreme, do not go to that one. Everything has two extremes, but you remain just in the middle.”
But the mind is very unmindful. That is why the sutra says, UNMINDING MIND… You will hear this, you will understand this, but the mind will not take note. The mind will always go on choosing extremes.
The extreme has a fascination for the mind. Why? Because in the middle, mind dies. Look at a pendulum: if you have any old clock, look at the pendulum. The pendulum can go on moving the whole day if it goes to the extremes. When it goes to the left it is gathering momentum to go to the right. When it goes toward the right, do not think that it is going toward the right – it is accumulating momentum to go toward the left. So the extremes are right-left, right-left.
Let the pendulum stay in the middle, then the whole momentum is lost. Then the pendulum has no energy, because the energy comes from one of the extremes. Then that extreme throws it toward another, then again, and it is a circle… the pendulum goes on moving. Let it be in the middle, and the whole movement will then stop.
Mind is just like a pendulum and every day, if you observe, you will come to know this. You decide one thing on one extreme, and then you move to another. You are angry; then you repent.
You decide, ”No, this is enough. Now I will never be angry.” But you do not see the extreme.
”Never” is an extreme. How are you so certain that you will never be angry? What are you saying?
Think once more – never? Then go to the past and remember how many times you have decided that ”I will never be angry.” When you say, ”I will never be angry,” you do not know that by being angry you have accumulated momentum to go to the other extreme.




The Middle Way or Middle Path (Pali: majjhimā paṭipadā; Sanskrit: madhyamā-pratipad; )[1] is the descriptive term that Siddhattha Gotama used to describe the character of the path that he discovered led to liberation. It was coined in the very first teaching that he delivered after his enlightenment.[2] In this sutta - known in English as The Setting in Motion of the Wheel of Dharma - the Buddha describes the middle way as a path of moderation between the extremes of sensual indulgence and self-mortification. This, according to him, was the path of wisdom. The middle path does not mean a mid point in a straight line joining two extremes represented by points. The Middle Way is a dynamic teaching as shown by the traditional story that the Buddha realized the meaning of the Middle Way when he sat by a river and heard a lute player in a passing boat and understood that the lute string must be tuned neither too tight nor too loose to produce a harmonious sound.
In later Theravada texts as well as in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, the Middle Way refers to the concept, enunciated in the Canon, of direct knowledge that transcends seemingly antithetical claims about existence.[3]


In Theravada Buddhism's Pali Canon, the very phrase "middle way" is ascribed to the Buddha himself in his description of the Noble Eightfold Path as a path between the extremes of austerities and sensual indulgence. Later Pali literature has also used the phrase "middle way" to refer to the Buddha's teaching of dependent origination as a view between the extremes of eternalism and annihilationism.

Noble Eightfold Path

In the Pali canon, the Middle Way (majjhimā paṭipadā) was said to have been articulated by the Buddha in his first discourse, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (SN 56.11):
"Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. (What are the two?) There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable.
"Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathagata (the Perfect One) has realized the Middle Path; it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to Nibbana. And what is that Middle Path realized by the Tathagata...? It is the Noble Eightfold path, and nothing else, namely: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration."[4]
Thus, for the attainment of Nibbana (Pali; Skt.: Nirvana), the Middle Way involves:
  • abstaining from addictive sense-pleasures and self-mortification
  • nurturing the set of "right" actions that are known as the Noble Eightfold Path.
In this discourse (Pali: sutta), the Buddha identifies the Middle Way as a path for "one who has gone forth from the household life" (Pali: pabbajitena)[5] although lay Buddhists may center their lives on this path as well.
In regard to the Buddha's admonition against the "indulgence of sense-pleasures" (Pali: kāmesu kāma-sukha-allika), Ven. Dr. Rewata Dhamma has written:
"...This kind of practice is the concern of so-called 'urban civilization,' which condones sensuous pleasures as the highest attributes of bliss; the greater the pleasures, the greater the happiness....
"The Buddha taught that indulgence in sensuous pleasures is not the practice of enlightened, noble ones (ariyas). Noble ones who live the worldly life do not have attachment to sense objects. For example, in the first stage of an enlightenednoble life, the sotāpanna, or stream winner, has not yet overcome lust and passions. Incipient perceptions of the agreeableness of carnal pleasures (sukhasaññā) still linger. Nevertheless, the stream-winner will not feel the need to indulge in worldly pleasures."[6]
According to the scriptural account, when the Buddha delivered the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, he was addressing five ascetics with whom he had previously practiced severe austerities.[7] Thus, it is this personal context as well as the broader context of Indian shramanic practices that gives particular relevancy to the caveat against the extreme (Pali: antā) of self-mortification (Pali: atta-kilamatha).

[edit]Dependent Origination

Harvey (2007) writes, "Conditioned Arising is ... a 'Middle Way' which avoids the extremes of 'eternalism' and 'annihilationism': the survival of an eternal self, or the total annihilation of a person at death."[8] In Theravadan literature, this usage of the term "Middle Way" can be found in 5th c. CE Pali commentaries.[9]
In the Pali Canon itself, this view is not explicitly called the "Middle Way" (majjhimā paṭipadā) but is literally referred to as "teaching by the middle" (majjhena dhamma) as in this passage from the Samyutta Nikaya's Kaccāyanagotta Sutta (in English and Pali):


"'Everything exists': That is one extreme.
'Everything doesn't exist': That is a second extreme.
Avoiding these two extremes,
the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma via the middle...."[10]
Sabbamatthī'ti kho ..., ayameko anto.
Sabbaṃ natthī'ti ayaṃ dutiyo anto.
... [U]bho ante anupagamma
majjhena tathāgato dhammaṃ deseti.[11]

In this discourse, the Buddha next describes the conditioned origin of suffering (dukkha) — from ignorance (avijja) to aging and death (jaramarana) — and the parallel reverse-order interdependent cessation of such factors (see Dependent Originationand Twelve Nidanas).[12] Thus, in Theravada Buddhist soteriology, there is neither a permanent self nor complete annihilation of the 'person' at death; there is only the arising and ceasing of causally related phenomena.[13]
See also: Anatta

[edit]Mahayana contexts

In Mahayana Buddhism, the Madhyamaka ("Middle Way") school posits a "middle way" position between metaphysical claims that things ultimately either exist or do not exist.[14]
In the Tendai school, the "middle way" refers to the synthesis of the thesis that all things are "empty" and the antithesis that all things have phenomenal existence.[15]
In Zen Buddhism the Middle Way describes the realization of being free of the one-sidedness of perspective that takes the extremes of any polarity as objective reality. For example, in the Platform Sutra of the Great Master Huineng, in Chapter 10 he gives instructions to be handed down about how to explain the Dharma. Huineng enumerates 36 basic oppositions of consciousness and discusses how the Way is free from both extremes.
"If one asks about the worldly, use the paired opposite of the saintly; if asking about the saintly use the paired opposite of the worldly. The mutual causation of the Way of dualities, gives birth to the meaning of the Middle Way. So, for a single question, a single pair of opposites, and for other questions the single [pair] that accords with this fashion, then you do not lose the principle. Suppose there is a person who asks, ‘What is taken for and called darkness?’ Reply and say, ‘Light is the proximate cause and darkness is the contributory cause. When light is ended, then there is darkness. By the means of light, darkness manifests; by the means of darkness, light manifests. [Their] coming and going are mutually proximate causes and become the meaning of the Middle Way.’" Sources
  • Bodhi, Bhikkhu (trans.) (2000). The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya. Boston: Wisdom Publications. ISBN 0-86171-331-1.
  • Bodhi, Bhikkhu (ed., trans.) (2005). In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pāli Canon. Somerville: Wisdom Publications. ISBN 0-86171-491-1.
  • Buddhaghosa, Bhadantācariya & Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli (trans.) (1999). The Path of Purification: Visuddhimagga. Seattle, WA: BPS Pariyatti Editions. ISBN 1-928706-00-2.
  • Dhamma, Rewata (1997). The First Discourse of the Buddha: Turning the wheel of Dhamma. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications. ISBN 0-86171-104-1.
  • Kohn, Michael H. (trans.) (1991). The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen. Boston: Shambhala. ISBN 0-87773-520-4.


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