SuttaCentral
Thank you Robert. You have given a clear and more than sufficient explanation. I will work out the rest myself and set to reading MN56.
you mentioned your post was quite long - i do not mind reading it - where do i find it?
also if you attend Bhante Sujato’s class at the Buddhist Library i would certainly like to meet you in person and thank you for taking time to answer my question.
Dear Molly,
you are very welcome. It would be great, if we would meet in person during a workshop some time in the future. Because I live in Germany, I am not certain when this will be, but who knows. 
Maybe there was a small misunderstanding about the “long post”. I am not an English native speaker, so I do not know all the right technical terms. When I said, I had written a “long post”, I just meant my reply to your question: The internet is usually very short-lived, and some people would consider my reply as too long and time consuming to read. So, in order to make the reply more convenient for reading, I highlighted the most important parts in bold font. That’s all I meant. So, thanks to you, for having the patience to read the whole text and many thanks for your kind feedback.
All the best to you and with much mettaa,
Robert
at least he himself wasn’t able to get awakened by practicing austerities, that’s how he knew they don’t work
And here’re excerpts from Aranavibhanga sutta (MN 139) on the matter
4. “A man should not pursue sensual desires, which are low, vulgar, coarse, ignoble, and connected with harm; and he should not pursue self-mortification, which is painful, ignoble and connected with harm.” So it was said. And with reference to what was this said?
Such pursuit of self-mortification, painful, ignoble and connected with pain, is a state beset by pain, by vexation, by despair and by fever, and it is the wrong way. Disengagement from such pursuit of self-mortification, painful, ignoble and connected with harm, is a state without pain, without vexation, without despair and without fever, and it is the right way.
5. “The Middle Way avoiding both these extremes has been discovered by the Perfect One (Tathāgata), giving sight, giving knowledge, which leads to peace, to direct knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nibbāna.”