1. Middle Way
Dve’me, bhikkhave, antā pabbajitena na sevitabbā:
i. Yo cāyaṃ kāmesu kāmasukhallikānuyogo—hīno, gammo, pothujjaniko, anariyo. anatthasaṃhito ;
ii. Yo cāyaṃ attakilamathānuyogo—dukkho, anariyo anatthasaṃhito,
Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. (What are the two?) There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, ignoble, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, ignoble, and unprofitable.

2. Two Extremes: Eternalism and Annihilationism
Are these two extremes the parts of everyone’s experience?
Rejection of two extremes: the extreme positions of nihilism and eternalism.
Nihilism rejects belief in a transmigrating self that experiences the results of actions;
Eternalism believes in the eternal existence of such a self.

3. The theory non self (anātman).
ātman (Pali, attā), literally meaning breath or spirit.
anātman (Pali, anattā) means no-self, no soul, or no-ego.
These two terms have been employed in the religious and philosophical writing of India to refer to an essential substratum within human beings.
Early Indian thinker of Buddha’s time generally regarded ātman as the basis for the existence of all living being.

4. Early Indian thinker of Buddha’s time generally regarded ātman as the basis for the existence of all living being.
It is always accompanied by the notion of mine (object of self), referring to all the perceivable objects within one’s environment.

5. The Chāndogya Upanisad: the atman is “without decay, death, grief.”
The Bhagavadgita calls the atman “eternal unborn undying immutable, primordial . . .all-pervading.”
Buddhism maintains that since everything is conditioned, and thus subject to ANITYA (IMPERMANENCE), the question of atman as a self-subsisting entity does not arise.

6. According to Buddhism, beings and inanimate objects of the world are constructed (sankhata), as distinguished from Nibbāna, which is unconstituted (asankhata).
The constituted elements are made up of the five Kkhandha (AGGREGATE).
A living being composed of five Kkhandhas is in a continuous state of flux, each preceding group of Kkhandhas giving rise to a subsequent group of Kkhandha.

7. This process is going on momentarily and unceasingly in the present existence as it will go on also in the future until the eradication of avijja (ignorance) and the attainment of Nibbāna.
The aggregates combine in various configurations to form what is experienced as a person, just as a chariot is built of various parts.
Thus, what we experience to be a person is not a thing but a process; there is no human being, there is only becoming.

8. When asked who it is, in the absence of a self, that has feeling or other sensations, the Buddha’s answer was that this question is wrongly framed: The question is not “who feels,” but “with what as condition does feeling occur?”
The answer is contact.

9. In the absence of an atman, one may ask how Buddhism accounts for the existence of human beings, their identity, continuity, and ultimately their religious goals.
At the level of “conventional truth” (sammuti-sacca), Buddhism accepts that in the daily transactional world, humans can be named and recognized as more or less stable persons. However, at the level of the “ultimate truth” (paramattha-sacca), this unity and stability of personhood is only a sense-based construction of our productive imagination.

10. As the process of one life span is possible without a permanent entity passing from one thought-moment to another, so too is a series of life-processes possible without anything transmigrating from one existence to another.
The corporeal bond, which held the individual together, falls away and his or her new body, determined by karma, becomes one fitted to that new sphere in which the individual is reborn.

11. What is it, that is reborn?
“What is it, Nàgasena, that is reborn?”
“Mind and matter.”
“Is it this very mind and matter that is reborn?”
“No, it is not, but by this mind and matter deeds are done and because of those deeds another mind and matter is reborn; but that mind and matter is not thereby released from the results of its previous deeds.”

12. DEPENDENT ORIGINATION
“Arising on the ground of a preceding cause,” (Pratītyasamutpāda) describes the existence of objects and phenomena as the result of causes.
“Whoever understands dependent origination understands the teaching of the Buddha, and whoever understands the teaching of the Buddha understands dependent origination”

14. Casual theory: “There being this, that appears.”
Each of the links of the chain of dependent origination is necessary for the production of the next element, yet none can definitely be perceived as sufficient on its own.
Since this complex chain of causation is always said to give rise to suffering, the deactivation of any of the twelve links of this chain is bound to break the causal process and to eliminate suffering.

15. According to the Pali canon, both the chain of dependent origination and the five AGGREGATE are responsible for suffering.
The noble truth concerned with the arising of suffering is simply explained by the Pratītyasamutpāda in normal order (anuloma), while the noble truth of cessation of suffering is defined by dependent origination in reverse order (patiloma).

16. The Theravada tradition holds that certain links of the chain of causation are limited either to the past, present, or future.
What comes under “past” could have been under “future” or “present,” and vice versa.
The physical and psychological elements at work in the individual remain the same whether in the past, present, or future.

17. Thus, there is nothing with an eternal self or atman, only mutually dependent origination and existence.
But the absence of an eternal atman does not mean there is no-thing at all. Early Buddhism adheres to a realistic approach which does not deny existence as such, but denies the existence of eternal and independent substances. This view is the Middle Way between eternalism and annihilationism.

18. 'Dependent origination' (paticca-samuppada) represents the middle way, which rejects the doctrines, 'He who acts is he who reaps' and 'One acts while another reaps' (S.ii.20) .
In the Pali Canon itself, this view is not explicitly called the "Middle Way" but is literally referred to as "teaching by the middle" (majjhena dhamma).