Jalan Tengah
Pada dasarnya, Jalan Tengah (Sansekerta:madhyamā-pratipad; Pali: majjhimā paṭipadā[1]) adalah ajaran Agama Buddha akan ketidak-kerasan.[1]
Lebih jelas, dalam Kitab Suci Pali Ajaran Theravada, Jalan Tengah menjelaskan jalur menuju Nirwana yang ditempuh Sang Buddha yang lebih sederhana mengenai kegemaran hawa nafsu, penyiksaan diri dan menuju kepada pelaksanaan kebijaksanaa, pengembahanga moral dan mental. Dalam beberapa sutta lain baik dalam Ajaran Theravada, Mahayana dan Vajrayana, Jalan Tengah menunjuk kepada sebuah konsep, seperti yang dituliskan dalam Kitab Suci, akan pengetahuan langsung yang melampaui suatu pemahaman yang sepertinya berlawanan dengan pendapat mengenai keberadaan.[2]
Ajaran Theravada
Dalam Kitab Suci Pali Agama Buddha - Ajaran Theravada, kalimat "jalan tengah" dianggap berasal dari Sang Buddha sendiri dalam penjelasannya akan Jalan Utama Berunsur Delapan sebagai sebuah jalan antara pengajaran yang keras dan lembut. Naskah berbahasa Pali juga menggunakan kalimat "jalan tengah" guna menerangkan ajaran Sang Buddha akan hukum sebab musabab sebagai sebuah pandangan akan pendapat keras mengenai keabadian dan ketidak-adaan (nihilisme).
Jalan Utama Berunsur Delapan
Dalam Tipitaka, kata "Jalan Tengah" (Pali:majjhimā paṭipadā) disebut pertama kali oleh Sang Buddha pada khotbah pertamanya, Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (SN 56.11). Khotbah ini dimulai dengan penjelasan akan dua cara keras yang harus dihindari oleh para bhikkhu, yaitu:
- mengumbar nafsu indriya (kāmasukhallikānuyoga), dan
- menyiksa diri (attakilamathānuyoga)
"Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. (What are the two?) There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable.
"Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathagata (the Perfect One) has realized the Middle Path; it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to Nibbana. And what is that Middle Path realized by the Tathagata...? It is the Noble Eightfold path, and nothing else, namely: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration."[4]
Thus, for the attainment of Nibbana (Pali; Skt.: Nirvana), the Middle Way involves:
* abstaining from addictive sense-pleasures and self-mortification * nurturing the set of "right" actions that are known as the Noble Eightfold Path.
In this discourse (Pali: sutta), the Buddha identifies the Middle Way as a path for "one who has gone forth from the household life" (Pali: pabbajitena)[5] although lay Buddhists may center their lives on this path as well.
In regard to the Buddha's admonition against the "indulgence of sense-pleasures" (Pali: kāmesu kāma-sukha-allika), Ven. Dr. Rewata Dhamma has written:
"...This kind of practice is the concern of so-called 'urban civilization,' which condones sensuous pleasures as the highest attributes of bliss; the greater the pleasures, the greater the happiness....
"The Buddha taught that indulgence in sensuous pleasures is not the practice of enlightened, noble ones (ariyas). Noble ones who live the worldly life do not have attachment to sense objects. For example, in the first stage of an enlightened noble life, the sotāpanna, or stream winner, has not yet overcome lust and passions. Incipient perceptions of the agreeableness of carnal pleasures (sukhasaññā) still linger. Nevertheless, the stream-winner will not feel the need to indulge in worldly pleasures."[6]
According to the scriptural account, when the Buddha delivered the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, he was addressing five ascetics with whom he had previously practiced severe austerities.[7] Thus, it is this personal context as well as the broader context of Indian shramanic practices that gives particular relevancy to the caveat against the extreme (Pali: antā) of self-mortification (Pali: atta-kilamatha).
Hukum Sebab Musabab
Harvey (2007) writes, "Conditioned Arising is ... a 'Middle Way' which avoids the extremes of 'eternalism' and 'annihilationism': the survival of an eternal self, or the total annihilation of a person at death."[8] In Theravadan literature, this usage of the term "Middle Way" can be found in 5th c. CE Pali commentaries.[9]
In the Pali Canon itself, this view is not explicitly called the "Middle Way" (majjhimā paṭipadā) but is literally referred to as "teaching by the middle" (majjhena dhamma) as in this passage from the Samyutta Nikaya's Kaccāyanagotta Sutta (in English and Pali):
"'Everything exists': That is one extreme. 'Everything doesn't exist': That is a second extreme. Avoiding these two extremes, the Tathagata teaches the Dhamma via the middle...."[10]
Sabbamatthī'ti kho ..., ayameko anto.
Sabbaṃ natthī'ti ayaṃ dutiyo anto.
... [U]bho ante anupagamma
majjhena tathāgato dhammaṃ deseti.[11]
In this discourse, the Buddha next describes the conditioned origin of suffering (dukkha) — from ignorance (avijja) to aging and death (jaramarana) — and the parallel reverse-order interdependent cessation of such factors (see Dependent Origination and Twelve Nidanas).[12] Thus, in Theravada Buddhist soteriology, there is neither a permanent self nor complete annihilation of the 'person' at death; there is only the arising and ceasing of causally related phenomena.[13] See also: Anatta
Ajaran Mahayana
Dalam Ajaran Mahayana, mazhab Madhyama ("Jalan Tengah") mengumpamakan sebuah "jalan tengah" antara pengakuan metafisik bahwa sesuatu sesungguhnya adalah ada atau tidak ada.
Dalam mazhab Tendai, "jalan tengah" merujuk kepada perpaduan pengertian bahwa segala sesuatu adalah "hampa" Dan pemikiran sebaliknya bahwa segala sesuatu mempunyai keberadaan yang fenomenal.
Lihat pula
Referensi
- ^ a b Kohn (1991), p. 143. Also see the Pali version of the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (available on-line at SLTP, n.d.-b, sutta 12.2.1) where the phrase majjhimā patipadā is repeatedly used.
- ^ (Inggris)David Kalupahana, Mulamadhyamakakarika of Nagarjuna. Motilal Banarsidass, 2006, page 1. "Two aspects of the Buddha's teachings, the philosophical and the practical, which are mutually dependent, are clearly enunciated in two discourses, the Kaccaayanagotta-sutta and the Dhammacakkappavattana-sutta, both of which are held in high esteem by almost all schools of Buddhism in spite of their sectarian rivalries. The Kaccaayanagotta-sutta, quoted by almost all the major schools of Buddhism, deals with the philosophical "middle path", placed against the backdrop of two absolutistic theories in Indian philosophy, namely, permanent existence (atthitaa) propounded in the early Upanishads and nihilistic non-existence (natthitaa) suggested by the Materialists."