EVAM INSTITUTE Buddhist Summer School 2021
The term Middle Way refers to the discoveries and teachings of Sakyamuni Buddha.
The Middle Way path, by nature and design, provides a fully integrative, responsive and living spirituality, based on the direct investigation of mind and its world, through hearing wisdom, contemplation, and meditation.
According to the Buddha, human suffering has always come from looking at the world through dualistic extremes: fundamentalism and doubt, right vs. wrong, looking at others as being either “in” or “out.”
In the sutras, the Buddha addresses dualism in a teaching to his student, Katyayana, by saying:
“That things exist is one extreme,
that they do not is another.
But I, the Tathagatha, accept neither is or is not
and i declare the truth from the Middle Position”
We may interpret the “middle position” as moderation or balance, or, we may imagine it as a vague or neutral approach to life. But, in his timeless teaching, the Buddha introduces us to another less obvious but stunning way to see the world — a way beyond dualism. He suggests that beyond our ordinary binary way of seeing things, lies a world of compassionate and creative possibilities. These avail themselves to us when we recognize that things are not limited to the labels we assign them. He is pointing us to the middle way of being. We need to examine what this has to do with us!