Gotama’s teaching of the middle way is an analysis of human experience that avoids both absolutes (“everything exists,” or “something exists forever”) & nihilism, or the despair that there is no meaning to life (“nothing exists”). “Dependent arising1” is key: the idea that our experience—phenomena, events, things & our mental reactions—comes about through the never-ending collisions of many processes, none of which exists separately, as a thing, self-existing. This is something that can be observed, with training, in each mental experience. Specifically the arising of dukkha , suffering & stress, can be observed, & with training, cut off. Dependent arising is a detailed, twelve-step analysis2 of the psychology of human experience. Seeing this process, we can identify the weak link where dukkha, suffering, can be cut off: craving, (taṅhā, the eighth of the twelve steps), which is key to Gotama’s teachings. (This key also appears in the well-known teaching of the four ennobling truths.) It is at this point in our mental process that habits, whether helpful or unhelpful, are either reinforced or weakened.
anatta • dependent arising • dukkha • free will • kamma • views