“_Noisy go the small waters, silent goes the vast ocean._”
♦Character of the Path♦
For him who will receive it there is another way revealed in the fourth
sacred truth. It tells of the Eightfold Sacred Path which may lead
within his own lifetime to the extinction of the Self-life.
It is called by the Buddha “the middle path,” for it is neither the path
of the common life on the one hand, nor of asceticism (the Brahman path)
on the other.
It is a path of understanding, and of release from all illusions about
the harvest of Desire.
It is not a path of ease. Self-desire must be rigorously denied. The
fetters which bind to the self-life must be broken.
The Path leads past sorrow and pain, past the illusions concerning the
world and its pleasures, past future separate conscious existences,
safely to the desired end, the repose of Nirvana.