Robert M. Ellis is a British philosopher and the originator of Middle Way Philosophy. He holds a degree in Religious Studies from Cambridge and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Lancaster University, where his 1997 thesis began the work he has continued ever since, and in 2013 he founded the Middle Way Society to develop and practice the approach with others. He came from a liberal Baptist background, declared himself an atheist at nine, first encountered Buddhism as an undergraduate in the 1980s, and later became interested in the problem of relativism and its counter-dependence on absolutism. He practiced Buddhism for around twenty years and was ordained in the Triratna Order, but found the tradition’s absolutizations in conflict with the experiential Middle Way he had encountered within it, which led him to develop a universal account independent of any single tradition.His work is deliberately cross-disciplinary, synthesizing Buddhist practice with Western philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, systems theory and embodied meaning, and drawing further on Jung, the arts and Christian tradition.

The Middle Way, in his account, is neither compromise nor a claim about reality but a principle of judgement that keeps attention in the uncertain zone between opposing certainties. His Middle Way Philosophy series is being published by Equinox and includes Absolutization, on the human tendency to mistake a partial account for the whole story, and The Five Principles of Middle Way Philosophy, its practical counterpart. Earlier books include The Buddha’s Middle Way, with a foreword by Stephen Batchelor, The Christian Middle Way, Bias and the Middle Way, and the introductory Migglism. He has earned his living as a teacher, lecturer and tutor, and now runs Tirylan House Retreat Centre in Wales.

https://www.robertmellis.net/