“If there is the view, ‘The soul and the body are the same,’ there is no living of the holy life; and if there is the view, ‘The soul is one thing, the body is another,’ there is no living of the holy life.1 Without veering towards either of these extremes, the Tathà„gata (Buddha) teaches the Dhamma by the middle: ‘With birth as condition, aging-and-death. ’”
Samyutta Nikaya (5c BCE-), The Samyutta Nikaya is part of the Pali Canon one of the earliest Buddhist texts.