Why is buddhism called the middle way?
Before the Buddhist period, there were two widely held beliefs; one was that all things were permanent, this described the transferring of the soul to a new body, after death and was called eternalism. The other was nihilism, which believed in the extinction of the being after death. In fact, they believed that everything was annihilated on death, as everyone was born of four elements and when the four elements dissolved, the being was also annihilated.The Buddha did not preach either eternalism or nihilism. Instead, he taught the truth or the reality of conditioned existence.
