The Middle Way or Middle Path (Pali: Majjhimāpaṭipadā; Sanskrit: Madhyamāpratipad; Tibetan: དབུ་མའི་ལམ།, THL: Umélam; Chinese: 中道; Vietnamese: Trung đạo; Thai: มัชฌิมาปฏิปทา) is the term that Gautama Buddha used to describe the character of the Noble Eightfold Path he discovered that leads to liberation.
In the Pāli Canon of Theravada Buddhism, the expression Middle Way is used by the Buddha in his first discourse, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, to describe the Noble Eightfold Path as the way to achieve nibbana instead of employing extremes of austerities and sensual indulgence. Later Pali literature has also used the phrase Middle Way to refer to the Buddha's teaching of dependent origination as a view between the extremes of eternalism and annihilationism.