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The Myth of the ‘Middle Way’
Buddhist
legend translated into English has it that the Buddha taught the Middle Way. Well, maybe! But then,
maybe not! In order to
decide whether or not the Buddha taught the Middle Way it is crucial to understand
what the word, translated into English as ‘middle’, actually meant in its
original languages (i.e. Pali and Sanskrit). The Pali
word used in Theravada discourses (note: all words are metaphors, i.e. user
friendly verbal analogies, hence fundamentally fuzzy)
translated into English as ‘middle’ is majjhima, meaning (i.e. its
meaning derived from the context in which it appears): middle, medium,
mediocre, secondary, moderate. Take your pick! The Sanskrit
word used in Mahayana discourses translated into English as ‘middle’ is 1.
madhya, meaning: middle, central, middling, mediocre, of medium kind:
middle-sized, moderate, intermediate; neutral; centre, inside,
interior, or, 2.
madhyam: in the midst of, into, amongst, in or through the midst of,
between, from the midst of, out of, from among, within, or as the verbal
derivative, 3.
madhamaka, meaning: common, interior. Take your pick! When
examining a text excerpt in which the term is used it can be seen that the
term, in either its Pali or its Sanskrit version, does not suggest either the
meaning of ‘half way’ or ‘golden mean’. Example 1.
The Buddha said: “To give oneself up to indulgence
in sensual pleasure (i.e. kāma = desire), the base, common,
vulgar, unholy, unprofitable; and also to give oneself up to self-torment
(i.e. refusing to indulge), the painful, unholy, unprofitable,
both these two extremes the Perfect One has avoided and has found the Middle Path, which causes one
both to see and to know, and which leads to peace, discernment, to awakening,
to nibbana.” ( LV1 11) But where
exactly is the middle between self-indulgence (or ‘exists’) as extreme and asceticism - as refusing to indulge -
(or ‘does not exist’) as extreme? Where is the
‘middle way’ between indulging (to wit, low, medium or high) in tasting a
strawberry and refusing to indulge (to wit, low, medium or high) in tasting a
strawberry, and which is a sensual act? Example 2.
The Buddha said: “This world, 0 Kaccāyana,
depends on affirmation and negation. /.../; ‘Everything exists’ is one
extreme; ‘nothing exists’ is the other. Avoiding these extremes, Tathāgata teaches the middle way.” If the
extremes are abstracted as ‘1’ (meaning all) and ‘not 1’, where does one find
the middle? It does seem that in these contexts the translation of majjhima
as ‘middle’ is (deliberately) misleading. It should here be translated as ‘in
the midst’, or ‘in between’, or ‘amidst’. But ‘in the midst between extremes’
can be anywhere and nowhere. The above is developed further as: Example 3. The Buddha said: “
‘Is’ is one extreme and ‘is not’ is the other. What is between the two extremes (to wit, the middle or
midst, my insertion) cannot be examined. It is inexpressible, undisclosed
and unachievable and it does not last. This, Kasyapa, is the sunya (i.e.
in-between, wrongly translated as ‘middle’) that is called the realization of
the manifestations of existence.” If one
understands ‘extreme’ to mean ‘a position’ (i.e. an actual contact base
(read: dharma), and which is momentary and leads to distress (Pali: dukkha)),
then relinquishing the extreme means taking no (read: zero or nil = sunya)
position and suffering no distress (dukkha). And that’s
the Buddhist rub. The Buddha was the Zero (response) Man. For he took no position in order to avoid distress (dukkha). The
Tathagata believed (wrongly, as it turns out when time (indeed eternalism,
i.e. the abiding) is excluded from action) that whatever position (read:
dharma) is taken it doesn’t last (i.e. it’s not abiding) and one does not own
it (i.e. it is not proper to one, hence an’atta) since one does not control
it (See the 3 characteristics sutta).
Avoiding taking a temporary, not own(-ed) position prevents distress (i.e.
suffering) from happening. This understanding was applied by the Buddha in
his life style, namely that of an itinerant (i.e. no-abiding) beggar (who
owned nothing). In everyday
terms, the Buddha recommended reducing one’s profile (i.e. one’s contact
range) toward zero (sunya, Note: sunya is the
Sanskrit term for zero in mathematics. This is achieved in two ways,
namely 1) by not interacting with and/or responding to the everyday world,
i.e. the realm of desire, hence death, and 2) by not interacting with and/or
responding to the inner world. Not responding to the inner world is achieved
by blindfolding death (mata) = life (or Mara, the
Evil one), and which is accomplished by means of perfect (i.e. @100%)
concentration (samadhi) upon an empty (sign-less) focus. The infamous
Nagarjuna, infamous because he reduced all arguments about ‘this’ or ‘is’ and
‘not this’ or ‘is not’ to the absurd, said:
“If I had a thesis (i.e. a position) of my own to advance, you could
find fault with it (thereby causing me distress, my insertion). Since I have
no thesis (i.e. position) to advance, the question of disproving it does not
arise.” Here
Nagarjuna not only explains his method of dialectic (of reducing all
arguments to naught = nil), but also describes the essence of Buddhist Way,
namely of not taking a position. In short, what Nagarjuna (like the Buddha)
says is what he does. And what he says is that distress is avoided by not
responding (i.e. by playing dead), that is to say, by not taking a position,
thereby offering zero profile for contact that results in distress. From which
follows that the Madhyama School term madhya(ma) should be translated
not as ‘middle’ but as ‘in between’ or ‘amidst’ or ‘inside’ (as in ‘inner’),
because the madhyama operative takes no position, hence holds to (and rests
in) zero (i.e. absence of) response (= nirvana). Madhayma
pratipad
should not be translated as ‘Middle Way’ but as the ‘In-between (or Inner)
Way’, in-between because the extremes (hence dharmas, and which result in
distress) are absent. The absence
of (sunyata = zero) position is made obvious in Nagarjuna’s celebrated
(indeed, breathtaking scholastic nonsense) statement: “ Not by
itself nor by another, nor by both, nor without cause Do positive
existents (i.e. dharmas) ever arise in any what whatsoever.” This is reductio
ad absurdum, and which serves to end thought and enforce silence. This
quote circumscribes the Zero (or sunya) Way, i.e. the skilful means of not taking a position/dharma (hence any
view which in itself is extreme because quantised) or a series of positions
(to wit, steps upon a path).
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