My summary of the philosophy and guidance of the Buddha, also known as the Tathagatha, Sakyamuni, Siddhartha, and Gotama (with some observations and notes):

Two extreme paths are to be avoided: the paths of profligacy and mortification. The middle path, as explained by the Tathagatha (Wayfarer), is the path of calm and knowledge. It presupposes a fourfold truth, namely, ‘suffering, its aggregation, alleviation, and the path.’ The first truth is suffering. This is conceptually and experientially diverse. Its truth value is not independent, and its experience is not fatal. So it ought not to be a bleak view of the world, meant to discourage or demotivate. Rather, it should allow for greater happiness by extrapolation. The second and third truths are the aggregation of, and the alleviation of, suffering. This occurs along a series of twelve interdependent phases whose relations are variously causal. The linear progression of these phases is representational, similar to a map of the earth. In progression from effects to causes, the phases are: entropy-death, birth, existence, existential-field, craving, impulse, contact, hexagonal-sense-field, name-form-duality, dispositions, science, and nescience. Each prior cause increases the aggregate of suffering. The fourth truth is the middle path itself. The wayfarer on this path, between birth and entropy-death, decreases the aggregate of suffering by weakening the network of causality of nescience and so forth. The wayfarer resolves to practice temperance in eight matters of conduct, variously related, as follows: perspective, will, speech, operations, subsistence, exercise, memory, and being. Metaphysical questions may be pursued only when they have positive utilitarian effects. Otherwise, any notions of permanence, everlasting perfection, etc., ensnare the wayfarer in a net of dogma. There is no independent truth value in such phrases as ‘supreme being’ or ‘individual soul,’ or their component concepts. They are megalomaniacal abstractions of the self, which itself is a function of a fivefold sub-aggregation within the twelve interdependent phases. This aggregation, called the five branches, is meant to be meditated upon as ‘not-self.’ The branches are first to be contemplated severally or in a progression, for the trunk is the ‘self’ and not conducive to ‘not-self’ thinking. The branches are: the form aspect of name-form (non-labelled forms; meditating upon the form of a book while decreasing association with its name), impulse (sensation, feeling; being aware of sensations and feelings within the body and not reacting to them as much as possible), cognition (which is a composite of the previous two and the next of the series; meditating with simple, regular awareness) dispositions (hermeneutic filters built upon past experience; meditating calmly upon differences of opinion and taste), and science (observations from deductive and inductive reasoning that avoid universal, superlative judgements; meditating upon scientific observations). An alternative meditation contemplates the sixfold sense-faculties and their respective fields as ‘not-self,’ as follows: ‘What I see and what is seen is not self, what I hear and what is heard is not self, what I smell and what is smelled is not self, what I taste and what is tasted is not self, what I touch and what is touched is not self, what I feel and what is felt is not self, what I think and what is thought is not self.’ (suitable to counter excessive mirth or sorrow). Such meditations might be depressing to a wayfarer accustomed to sense-indulgence. Temperance is therefore in order. Equating realization and happiness to ‘nothing,’ ‘non-being’ or ‘nothingness’ is fallacious for they are also dependently originated derivatives of the twelve phases. A wayfarer avoids Buddhism, whether Tibetan, Chinese, Mahayana, Theravada, etc. This is discussed at length by the Taoists. The unfalsifiable notion of the Buddha being an incarnation of some inscrutable deity or god is, needless to say, self-defeating. In the opinion of this writer, a quiet life dedicated to

mathematics, science, any forms of movement, or creative pursuits, might be more conducive to the middle path. Competition is valuable (but not necessary) in the beginning, and superfluous further along in the journey. The end is vague, and happily so. Fare thee well!