Friends:

Avoiding the Extremes Opens the Middle Way to Peace!

There are, friends, these two extremes which not should be practiced
by one, who has taken up purification: The hunt for sensual pleasures,
which is low, vulgar, the common way of ordinary worldlings, ignoble,
disadvantageous; and any practice of self-torture, which also is quite
painful, ignoble, and quite disadvantageous! Without veering towards
either of these extremes, the well-gone-beyond Buddha has awakened
to the Middle Way, which leads to assured vision, to direct knowledge,
which leads to ease, to peace, to certain knowledge, to Enlightenment,
to Nibbana. And what is that Middle Way awakened to by the Buddha,
which leads to assured vision, to direct knowledge, which leads to ease,
to peace, to certain knowledge, to Enlightenment, to Nibbāna ?
It is this very Noble 8-fold Way: That is

Right View
Right Motivation
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Effort
Right Awareness
Right Concentration

That is indeed the very Middle Way awakened to by the Blessed Buddha,
which leads to assured vision, to direct knowledge, which leads to ease,
to certain knowledge, to Peace, to Bliss, to Enlightenment, to Nibbāna...

Source:
The Grouped Sayings of the Buddha. Samyutta Nikāya. Book IV [330-1]
Section 42: On The 6 Senses. Rasiya: 12.
http://www.pariyatti.com/book.cgi?prod_id=948507
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/canon/samyutta/index.html

Further study on the Noble 8-fold Way:
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/II/The_Way.htm
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/II/Middle_Way.htm
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/II/Fulfilled_First_.htm
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/Noble_8_fold_Way.htm
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/IV/The_3-fold_Way.htm
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/II/Failed_by_Neglect.htm
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/The_Noble_8-Fold_Way.htm
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/Fruits_of_the_Noble_Way.htm
http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/II/The_4th_Noble_Truth_on_The_Way_to_Cease_Suffering.htm

 

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Updated: 22 Nov 2009 http://What-Buddha-Said.net/drops/II/Middle_Way.htm