The Middle Way of the Buddha derives from his experience of extreme asceticism on the one hand (he nearly died of it) and extreme indulgence on the other hand  (the dreary princely life). Aristotle promotes the mese hodos, a pragmatic middle way;  Horace nails it down: auream quisquis mediocritam diligit -- choose the golden mean (interesting how mediocritam drifted over time).  But Rumi in his Masnavi -- which I have just been reading -- blows this whole thing up.  He points out that "a mean is between finites, " that is, to find the middle point of a line, you need to be able to have both ends defined first.  But in life,  we have a Beginning about which no one knows anything, and an End about which no one knows anything.  Where is the middle to that? 
 
It can be made even worse in mystical geometry  -- if such a thing is possible --  because the way you bisect a line is to get a pair of compasses,  and using each end point as the centre, draw a circumference of a circle that intersects the other circle's circumference, and from that intersection point, which hovers above the line, you drop a perpendicular to the original line, thus defining the middle.  Sort of like creating a spiritual helicopter with a dangling line.  But we can neither know the beginning, nor the end, so as to get this neat little diagramming underway; and therefore,  alas,  we cannot locate where the spiritual helicopter of God waits, hovering,  buzzing overhead at the intersection point of our lives, ready to lift us off in a cloud of golden dust to eternal safety.