Middle Way
111
MENTIONS
37
EPISODES
32
PODCASTS
Search complete. 111 mentions across 37 episodes found for "Middle Way".
Oct 29, 2026
Thanissaro BhikkhuHOST
The Buddha said that his path is a middle way between indulgence in sensual pleasures and indulgence in self-torture.
Thanissaro BhikkhuHOST
Now this doesn't mean it's halfway between pleasure and pain, sort of a middling kind of feeling.
Thanissaro BhikkhuHOST
What he's advocating in his path is a kind of pleasure that's not on the spectrum.
Dave SmithHOST
And really, one thing I just want to say before we kind of set the table for what we're going to talk about this evening is...
Dave SmithHOST
Making a plug for probably the most important concept in Buddhist thought, which is that of the middle way, the ability to hold extremes, the ability to hold polarization, the ability to recognize that life is both tragic and beautiful all the time in every single moment.
Dave SmithHOST
And that will make a big plug for this, but really to just say at the beginning, one of the things that I think gets missed in the discourse around Buddhist practice is that the equipment of the mind-brain-nervous system that we live in is the same equipment that leads to happiness and well-being and human flourishing is the same equipment that leads to misery and despair and suffering and addiction.
Dave SmithHOST
And that as agents, we need to take that idea very seriously.
Margaret MaloneyHOST
And the Buddha was careful about what kind of path it is.
Margaret MaloneyHOST
So in that first sermon, he frames it as the middle way, Majjhima Patipada.
Margaret MaloneyHOST
Between two extremes he'd personally tested.
Margaret MaloneyHOST
On one side, indulgence in sensual pleasure, the life he'd known as a pampered prince.
Dionne GinesNARRATOR
The Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path.
Dionne GinesNARRATOR
He condemned the extreme physical mortification of the ascetics on the one hand, and the enjoyment of sensual pleasures on the other, pointing out and recommending the Noble Eightfold Path as the Middle Path.
Dionne GinesNARRATOR
Question.
Dionne GinesNARRATOR
Did the Buddha hold with idol worship? Answer.
BrianHOST
Not a self, not the one watching.
BrianHOST
And the middle way isn't a slot between it is and it is not where something gets to sit.
BrianHOST
The middle way is dependent origination.
BrianHOST
And I've been talking about awareness for a while.
BrianHOST
I promise we will do that in the next class.
BrianHOST
Emptiness is what that means for everything.
BrianHOST
And so today Brassington takes us into the chapter of Nagarjuna's text where those two become one.
BrianHOST
It's chapter 24 of the Fundamental Discourses of the Middle Way, and it opens with an imaginary opponent.
Yeshe KaytupHOST
These are extremes.
Yeshe KaytupHOST
You'll find the middle way between them.
Yeshe KaytupHOST
When you have a question like this, always look for the middle way.
Yeshe KaytupHOST
To do this would be an extreme.
Yeshe KaytupHOST
to have it done to you would be an extreme.
Bhante JoeHOST
And just like all the paradoxes that we encounter, as people who meditate, it's a paradox to be solved through balance.
Bhante JoeHOST
It's a paradox to be solved in the middle way by taking things in the center.
Bhante JoeHOST
So this requires us to watch when our mind goes over too far and to pull it back.
Bhante JoeHOST
But it also requires us to have an understanding of the reasons for which we associate with good friends on the path.
KashiHOST
So he starts to nourish his body, but he does lose approval of some companions who have been following him.
KashiHOST
But he chose the middle way.
KashiHOST
He chose the middle path.
KashiHOST
It's just like...
David RoylanceHOST
I use this book, it's the first book of our book series as a guide for this particular program where each Sunday I go chapter by chapter.
David RoylanceHOST
And today we're in chapter six, which is titled The Middle Way, Walking the Middle Way.
David RoylanceHOST
This is actually a very simple teaching.
David RoylanceHOST
It'll probably take me all of about 10 or 15 minutes to teach it to you.
David RoylanceHOST
That sound's going to arise, it's going to change, and then it's going to fade away.
David RoylanceHOST
And you can be at ease and you can be peaceful.
David RoylanceHOST
Then we're going to come out of the meditation with some more chanting, and then that's where I'll start today's class, helping you guys to understand the middle way and how to walk the middle way.
David RoylanceHOST
In terms of your body position for meditation, there's four positions that the Buddha taught, seated, lying, standing, and walking.
Tim WicksGUEST
So our suffering, the Buddha saw, comes from clinging youth, clinging good health, and clinging not dying, which we're still engaged with now in our current society, 2,500 years later.
Tim WicksGUEST
So the Buddha went off and he practiced asceticism, which is starving himself to the brink of death almost, and hung out with some other ascetics before reaching what it is that he called the middle way, found was the middle way.
Tim WicksGUEST
So it's neither extreme luxury that he lived in as a prince, or the extreme austerity that he had been practicing as a ascetic.
Tim WicksGUEST
He accepted some rice, so he was an ascetic for about six years, and then when he visualized the middle way, he accepted some rice and rice pudding from a young woman who fed him, and he said that he was gonna sit beneath a Bodhi tree, vowing not to move until he found the ultimate true path to the liberation of suffering.
Tim WicksGUEST
And to cut a long story short, he became enlightened and uncovered the four noble truths, which is that in life there is suffering.
Tim WicksGUEST
Many of you know this.
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