In Sanskrit, “Differentiation of the Middle Way and the Extremes”; one of the
Five Dharma Treatises of Maitreya (
byams chos sde lnga) said to have been presented to Asaṅga by the
bodhisattva Maitreya in the Tuṣita heaven. Written in verse, it is one of the most important
Yogācāra delineations of the
three natures (
trisvabhāva), especially as they figure in the path to enlightenment, where the obstacles created by the imaginary (parikalpita) are overcome ultimately by the
antidote of the consummate (pariniṣpanna). The “middle way” exposed here is that of the
Yogācāra, and is different from that of Nāgārjuna, although the names of the two extremes to be avoided—the extreme of permanence (śāśvatānta) and the extreme of annihilation (ucchedānta)—are the same. Here the extreme of permanence is the existence of external objects, the
imaginary nature (
parikalpitasvabhāva). The extreme of annihilation would seem to include Nāgārjuna’s emptiness of
intrinsic nature (
svabhāva). The middle way entails upholding the existence of consciousness (vijñāna) as the
dependent nature (
paratantrasvabhāva) and the existence of the consummate nature (
pariniṣpannasvabhāva). The work is divided into five chapters, which consider the
three natures, the various forms of obstruction to be abandoned on the path, the
ultimate truth according to
Yogācāra, the means of cultivating the antidotes to the
defilements, and the activity of the
Mahāyāna path. (Source: The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, p. 489)