中道

bedfull_o_books just called me over to watch a scene in Spirited Away: the scene in which Chihiro takes a train to get to Zeniba's house.

The first thing I noticed was the "中道" placard on the front. On a transit vehicle, this might mean "Central Line". It also means something else.

From the Wikipedia article:

The Central Path, Middle Way or Middle Path (Pali: majjhimā paṭipadā; Sanskrit: madhyamā-pratipad[1][a]; Chinese: 中道 zhōngdào; Japanese: 中道 chūdō) is the term that Siddhartha Gautama used to describe the character of the path he discovered that leads to liberation.

There's not much in English about this, but there is a bit in Japanese.

Well, that's a relief.

From David Wessel's story in the Wall Street Journal:

Lawrence Summers pulled out of the contest to succeed Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve after weeks of public excoriation, forcing President Barack Obama to move further down the list of contenders to head the central bank.

Summers' letter to the President is available from the Wall Street Journal as a pdf.