pratipat saiva madyamā
The Middle Path means to take a course between two extremes. Two possible extremes are the affirmation of substantial Being on the one hand (“eternalism”), and nihilistic denial of all existence on the other (“annihilationism”). The teaching of śūnyatā denies the extreme view of substantial Being, and the teaching of conventional designation or existence denies the extreme view of nihilism. It is clear that all of these four phrases are different ways to express the same concept. They are various attempts to explain one teaching and one reality. Co-arising, emptiness, conventional existence, and the Middle are not four realities, four separate existences, or four independent doctrines, but four ways to express the same one reality, the Buddha-dharma, which is saṃsāra to us common ignorant mortals and nirvāṇa to a Buddha. Hence the common Mahāyāna proposition that “there is no difference between saṃsāra and nirvāṇa.”