On the Coin's Edge: Buddhism and Madhyama

 (My writings are built on an understanding of the fifth chapter of Foundations of Buddhism, written by Rupert Gethin. I will quote a few specific passages but the argument arises from the chapter. I will also briefly mention the Nikayas.)

The teachings of the no self, which tell us that the "I" of the moment is something like the beads on an infinite necklace, connected to other lives by the events that make up the chain, but ultimately insubstantial, circular, holding together but worn by nothing and no one. Yet this chain provides a sense of stability despite the empty lack of a neck, claiming neither to exist or to not exist--simply to be, broken only by awakening. And the understanding of the necklace, of the links that make up its change, of the life-beads that string it, allows it to be unlatched, for that web of events to cease growing.

This is the middle path, madhyama, one of the great challenges of Buddhism, for the temptation to pick either "is" or "is not" is so overwhelming that the Buddha warns about being entangled in its conflict (Brahmajala Sutta, Buddha's warning quoted in full on pages 148-149 of the Ganethin text). The middle way involves neither grasping at notions of importance that would lead us to believe in the self (Ganethin text, page 146), believing that we are constant, that we do not change--although the whole world changes!--or denying that there are links, that the particular bead on the chain that is inhabited at this point in time has its own influences, its own shaping marks, becoming more or less inclined toward all the different branches of life (Ganethin text, page 145). Specifically, "the middle way is that there is only the connectedness, there is only dependent arising" (Ganethin text, page 145), where dependent arising is the idea of the web of causality, that we are constantly changed by every decision and event, so much so that no "we" truly exists, for it differs so much as it passes through its lives. "No substantial self endures during a lifetime, so no substantial self endures from death to rebirth," writes Ganethin (page 144).

The middle path requires an effort of will to grasp, but it, in Buddhist philosophy, differentiates Buddhism from nihilism (Ganethin text, 144). And the Buddha would argue, I think, that the middle path spares us of the turmoil of worrying whether or not there is or is not. In the Nikayas, I quote, "Whether one holds the view that world is infinite [...] or finite, there is still birth, aging, death, grief, despair, pain, and unhappiness--and it is the destruction of these here and now that I declare" (The Short Dialogue

         with Maluitky, section 430).