Excerpt from "The Right Endurance" from Ven. Nyanamolis book "Dhamma Within Reach - A Guide to Endurance, Patience and Wisdom" (download: https://www.hillsidehermitage.org/new-book/):
From Hillside Hermitages video "Escape from the Body":Q: What is the middle way between asceticism and sensual indulgence? Is it the practice of enduring (neither giving in to or denying) thoughts?
Nyanamoli: That’s the way to cultivate the middle way.
Acting out of sensual thoughts, accepting them without reflection, not enduring them with sense restraint—that is what Sensuality is. [...]
Once you realize that acting out of sensual thoughts is bad, you will probably naturally jump to the conclusion that you mustn’t have those thoughts to begin with. That you must get rid of them and prevent them from manifesting. That is how you go to the other extreme: denial of thoughts.
You need to differentiate between “withstanding arisen thoughts” (enduring) and trying to “get rid of the presence of arisen thoughts” (denying).
The latter way is equally ignoble to the habitual giving in to sensual thoughts. That way can take you into that other extreme of self-mortification and extreme denials.
Physical endurance is hard, but it’s not as hard as enduring a presence of a sensual thought without acting out of it or trying to deny its presence.
[...] Allowing thoughts to endure without acting out of them, would be the beginning of the Middle Way.
Compare this to:{15:46} [Nyanamoli:] The mind of lust is there, that needs to be endured. So the mind of lust is there, I must not act out of it. And if you're jumping into practice of asubha [i.e. the contemplation of the unattractiveness of the body in order to get rid of that lust] immidiately, you're acting out of it. You're not allowing it to be for what it is, that is the phenomenon of lust, the mind affected with lust; you're trying to get rid of it.
{16:05} And which is exactly the motion of sensuality. Lust is present, you jump into the sensuality to get rid of that painful
'itch'.
MN 2: which āsava are to be abandoned by enduring/tolerating? which ones are to be abandoned by destroying/removing?
SN 45.8:
(transl. Ven. Thānissaro Bhikkhu, https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/SN/SN45_8.html)And what, monks, is right effort? (i) There is the case where a monk generates desire, endeavors, activates persistence, upholds & exerts his intent for the sake of the non-arising of evil, unskillful qualities that have not yet arisen.
(ii) He generates desire, endeavors, activates persistence, upholds & exerts his intent for the sake of the abandoning of evil, unskillful qualities that have arisen.
(iii) He generates desire, endeavors, activates persistence, upholds & exerts his intent for the sake of the arising of skillful qualities that have not yet arisen. (iv) He generates desire, endeavors, activates persistence, upholds & exerts his intent for the maintenance, non-confusion, increase, plenitude, development, & culmination of skillful qualities that have arisen. This, monks, is called right effort.
And how can one remove unskillful thoughts such as sensual desire?
MN 20 shows 5 ways to get rid of unskillful thoughts; some of which are what Ven. Nyanamoli would call "denying" thoughts (e.g. replacing it with another, skillful thought)
(ironically, he even quotes the sutta in the article..).