

The Buddha's teaching, as expressed in the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, can appear rational and perhaps even reassuring to many of us.

But these teachings lead to outcomes that we might find less palatable. For example, in the Samyutta Nikaya (12.15) the Buddha tells Maha Kaccana:

Everything exists - that is one extreme. Everything doesn't exist - that is the other extreme. Avoiding these two extremes, The Tathagata teaches the dhamma by the middle way.

I remember when I first read this phrase - goosebumps arose on my arm as I realized that this was not the cozy, familiar middle way between luxury and asceticism. Rather, this statement of the middle way radically and completely cut away every sense of certainty, leaving me . . . where?

With this teaching, the Buddha plunges the practitioner into profoundly unfamiliar territory - the unknown spaciousness where name and form no longer obtain.

For me, it's the Buddha's most profound declaration of don't know.