… Having gotten up from that seat, he doesn’t attend to the beginning of that talk, doesn’t attend to the middle, doesn’t attend to the end. Just as when a pot is turned upside down, water poured there runs off and doesn’t stay; in the same way, there is the case where a person, having gone to a monastery, often listens …
The Middles of the Middle Way
In his very first sermon, the Buddha introduced his path of practice as a middle way that avoids two extremes: a commitment to sensual pleasures related to sensual desires, and a commitment to self-affliction. On the surface, this statement makes the path sound like a middling way, at a bland halfway point on the continuum between pleasure …
Contents
Titlepage
Contents
Cover
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Beyond All Directions
Readings
Lost in Quotation
An All-around Eye
Metta Means Goodwill
On Denying Defilement
Virtue Without Attachment
The Limits of the Unlimited Attitudes
The Essence of the Dhamma
The Middles of the Middle Way
Two Types of Middle
The Middles of Moderation
Moderation & Concentration
Discernment & Moderation
The Middles of Appropriate Attention
Questions of Becoming
Two …
The Middleness of the Middle Way
Informal remarks after a talk, August 5, 1981.
I can tell a resolute person when I see him—like our Ven. Ācariya Mun. It was intimidating just to look at him. How could the defilements not be intimidated by him? Even we were intimidated by him, and the defilements are smarter than we are, so how could they …
… Having sown it there, he would sow it in the middling field. Having sown it there, he might sow it in the poor field—sandy, salty, with bad soil—or he might not. Why is that? It would at least go toward cattle fodder.”
“In the same way, headman, like the excellent field are the monks & nuns to me. I teach them the Dhamma …
Two Kinds of Middle
March 28, 2007
This path we’re following is called the Middle Way, and it’s important that you understand that there are two kinds of “middle”: One is the midpoint on a continuum; the other is a point off the continuum entirely. And the Buddha teaches both.
For example, in terms of the effort you put into the practice …
We should always keep in mind that the Buddha’s first description of
the path that he taught was the middle way between two extremes.
Because it’s a middle way, it requires discernment. In fact, finding
where exactly the middle lies is what exercises our discernment. If
the path were simply a matter of pushing and pushing and pushing all
the time or …
The Middleness of the Path
August 13, 2004
This path we’re following: There’s a way in which you could call it sensitivity training — getting more and more sensitive to the way the mind creates suffering for itself. As you deal with a layer of blatant suffering, you peel it away and find another, more subtle one. This is a lot of what …
… He taught what he called the middle way.
We know the most famous formulation of that in his first sermon, where
he found the middle way between commitment to sensual pleasure and
commitment to self-torture, saying that neither commitment was noble.
He proposed the noble eightfold path as the middle way out.
Now, this is not a middling way, halfway between self-torture …
The path we’re following here is the middle way. The Buddha’s first
explanation of how it’s middle is that it avoids two extremes: the
extreme of self-torture and the extreme of sensual indulgence. A
problem with us as meditators is that we tend to veer off to the left,
veer off to the right, and very rarely stay on the …
… Whichever set of clothes he might want to wear during the middle of the day, he would wear that set of clothes during the middle of the day. Whichever set of clothes he might want to wear during the late afternoon, he would wear that set of clothes during the late afternoon.
“In the same way, whichever factor for awakening among these seven factors …
… You go for a treatment, and the first couple of times it’s hard to keep things in alignment after the treatment; you find yourself going back to your old ways of walking, sitting, etc. But if you keep at it long enough, you begin to realize that this new middle here, the new alignment, is actually a lot better, and you’re more …
… The Buddha talks about the middle path, or the middle way, from the very beginning of his teachings. What’s interesting, though, is that even though he presents this as one of the most important principles of his teachings, he doesn’t explain it very much. In his first sermon, he says that the middle way is the way that avoids the extremes of …
Contents
Titlepage
Table of Contents
Cover
Copyright
Quotation
Introduction
From Ignorance to Emptiness
The Tracks of the Ox
The Path of Strength
The Savor of the Dhamma
The Middleness of the Middle Way
The Simile of the Horse
Principles in the Practice, Principles in the Heart
The Four Frames of Reference
The Work of a Contemplative
The Fangs of Unawareness
The Outer Space of …
… But if you
haven’t reached that point, you don’t really know the middle of the
middle way.
Ajaan Maha Boowa has a nice passage where he talks about how, for most
of us, the middle of the middle way is right in the middle of the
pillow—not the middle of the cushion that we’re sitting on, the middle
of the …
… The noble path lies
in the middle way. Now, the middle way is not half way between
indulgence and torture, in other words, a middling level of pain and
pleasure. It lies outside of that continuum. It’s able to see pain and
pleasure as tools—not as ends in and of themselves, but as things you
can use. Or you can think of …
AN 3:30 Avakujja Sutta | Upside Down
… Having gotten up from that seat, he doesn’t attend to the beginning of that talk, doesn’t attend to the middle, doesn’t attend to the end. Just as when a pot is turned upside down, water poured there runs off and doesn’t stay; in the same way, there is the case where a person, having gone to a monastery, often listens …
The Middles of the Middle Way | Beyond All Directions
The Middles of the Middle Way In his very first sermon, the Buddha introduced his path of practice as a middle way that avoids two extremes: a commitment to sensual pleasures related to sensual desires, and a commitment to self-affliction. On the surface, this statement makes the path sound like a middling way, at a bland halfway point on the continuum between pleasure …
