The Middle Way of the Buddha is not going between opposites like Moses through the Red Sea or Odysseus through the Scylla and Charybdis. That really doesn’t work. Try going through happiness and pain, going through a double-bind when both choices are lose/lose. Here’s a good lose/lose situation where you feel on one hand innocent, but on the other hand you are going accused, so are you guilty. You had good intentions, but you hurt people. Are you innocent or guilty? The mind will oscillate between the two, one minute feel innocent, yet guilt nags you. What is the Middle Way? It doesn’t work.

Buddhism and the non-dual traditions are transcendent traditions, which means that you create your way out of a double-bind where you can’t choose your way out, when no Middle Way appears. But, creativity is spontaneous, so you can’t choose a transcendent way because choice is not spontaneous. Choice is time bound. You choose your way to the future and out of suffering, we believe in the American Way. But you can’t choose the Transcendent Way, we just kick suffering down the road.

The Third Truth is the end of suffering. Transcendence is the end of suffering because there is no cause to creativity. You can make creativity happen. You can’t make love happen (love is transcendent). You can’t make the cessation of suffering happen by avoiding it, by choosing your way out of it.

Just as Jesus accepted and choose the suffering of the Cross (life), Buddha does the same. Buddha and Christ consciousness are One, and this unity consciousness is known as laughter and joy. So the Jesus says I am the Way…laughter is the way, because laughter is what we do when we are resurrected from the cross of suffering. Every situation is the Cross. Life is the Cross (suffering) Buddha said. Life is Loss and death…old age, sickness, and death.

So when you look in the mirror and see the wrinkles of your suffering. Accept them, and laugh. You transcend old age, sickness and death by totally accepting it. It is your avoidance that creates your suffering.

If you accept your own pain fully, you accept the pain of all life because Life is One. What you don’t accept, you blame on others, because non acceptance does not make it go away, it just comes at you from the future as some external cause of your pain. Suffering is the misplaced cause of your pain.