You shouldn't devote yourself to self-affliction, painful, ignoble, unprofitable. That that too is not going to lead to the truth. He says avoid both of these extremes, the middle way. Now in the Dhammakaka-pavatana-sutra, he goes on to describe what are known as four noble truths. Now this, monks, is the noble truth of suffering, or dukkha. Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, death is suffering, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, and despair are suffering. Association with the unbeloved is suffering, separation from the loved is suffering.