**The Root Text of the Yogachara Tradition**

Middle Beyond Extremes is one of the main root texts of the Yogacara tradition and its descendant the Shentong tradition. This text presents the core material traditionally covered in both Abhidharma and Madhyamaka texts from a Yogacara point of view, as well as a profound description of the practice of analytical vipashyana. It explains the profound key points of the entire path of the Great and Lesser Vehicles and reveals reality, free of dualistic extremes.

This text is one of the five great treatises of Maitreya, the supreme Bodhisattva of the tenth ground and the future Buddha. In about the third century CE, Maitreya presented this to Asanga, who then committed it to writing and taught it widely.

Each verse is explained by two commentaries - an "annotation-commentary" by Shenphen Chokyi Nangwa and a "meaning-commentary" by Ju Mipham, which is based upon the commentaries by Vasubandhu and Sthiramati. The verses and commentaries are followed by Mipham’s topical outline.

The opening stanzas of this text has mystified readers for over 1,500 years:

The Way Things Are
The false imagination exists.
In it, the two do not exist.
Emptiness exists here,
And within it, that exists as well. [I.1]

Not empty, not not empty—
This explains it all,
Because of existence, non-existence, and existence.
This is the path of the Middle Way. [I.2]

**The Root Text of the Yogachara Tradition**

Core Materials

Supplemental Materials

Class Recordings