- Buddha-Nature
- Compassion
- Defining Bodhicitta
- Emptiness
- Equalizing & Exchanging Self and Others
- Equanimity
- History of Bodhicitta Teachings
- How to Develop Bodhicitta
- Interdependent Origination
- Lineage of the Profound View
- Lineage of the Vast Conduct
- Mahāyāna
- Mind Training
- Non-Self
- Seven-Point Instructions of Cause and Effect
- The Bodhisattva Ideal
- The Bodhisattva Path
- The Bodhisattva Vow
- The Bodhisattva's Goal
- The Four Immeasurables
- The Six Perfections
- The Three Higher Trainings
- The Two Accumulations
- The Two Truths
- Tonglen: The Practice of Sending and Receiving
- Types of Bodhicitta
The Two Truths (satyadvaya) are one of the hallmarks of Buddhist philosophy, in which they reference the two modes of reality, ultimate and relative. Though they are represented in all four of the tenet systems, each of which have their own positions on these, they are an especially prominent theme in the Mahāyāna. And, perhaps nowhere more so than in the Middle Way, or Madhyamaka, school of thought introduced by Nāgārjuna.
The Two Truths
At the center of each of the Buddhist systems of philosophical tenets lies a presentation of their understanding of the two truths (satyadvaya). Each of these school's presentations of the two truths is an exploration into the way that things exist. These two truths act as guides to orient us in our investigation into what is really true—what can be ultimately relied on—and what we should understand to be false.
Mention of the two truths is found throughout the Mahāyāna sūtras, but one of the clearest presentations of the two truths is found in The Root Stanzas of the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā) by Nāgārjuna, where he states:
The Dharma that the buddhas teach Is wholly founded on two truths: The “all-concealing” truth of mundane beings And the truth of ultimate reality. (24.8)[1]
Here, Nāgārjuna explains that all the Buddha's teachings are grounded in the two truths—the relative truth (saṃvṛtisatya) and the ultimate truth (paramārthasatya). Throughout the sūtras, the Buddha repeatedly affirms that all phenomena can be encompassed within these two truths. They explain that there is nothing that exists that is not one of these two truths—there is no third truth apart from these.
The two truths are a way to explain that there is some reality to the phenomena that we encounter in our daily lives, but they also acknowledge that at a deeper level of analysis this surface-level appearance is an illusion. When we look into the deeper nature of things, we start to see how they do not exist in the same way that they superficially appear to us.
This does not mean that the two truths are completely separate and contradictory. Rather, it is important to understand that these two truths are two perspectives in relation to a single phenomena. These two perspectives are revealed at two different levels of analysis, one through relative analysis and one through ultimate analysis.
The nature of each of the two truths is explained in Candrakīrti’s text Entering the Middle Way (Madhyamakāvatāra):
All entities bear dual natures as obtained by correct or false views [of them]. What is seen by perfect vision is the ultimate truth, and what is seen by false vision is conventional truth, it is taught. (6.23)[2]
At the heart of the presentation of the two truths lies the dichotomy between appearance and reality. The relative, or conventional, truth is the world of appearance, the superficial and subjective nature of phenomena, the world that appears as real and "true" to ordinary unenlightened beings. It essentially refers to any phenomena other than emptiness. Its very etymology, from the Sanskrit word saṃvṛti, contains the meaning of a truth that "conceals," such that this relative nature actually obscures the deeper level of reality of phenomena. Relative truth has a certain level of reality to it at a conventional level, but when examined more closely with a discriminating wisdom that searches out the deeper nature of all phenomena, this relative truth cannot be found.
The ultimate truth is the deepest ontological status of phenomena, the truth of the nature of things as they really are. It is the deepest, undeceiving nature of things, and is the nature of phenomena that is revealed under the most intense philosophical analysis.
In a crucial verse of his classic text The Way of the Bodhisattva (Bodhicaryāvatāra), Śāntideva mentions the division of the two truths but also describes the different minds that are able to realize them:
Relative and ultimate, These the two truths are declared to be. The ultimate is not within the reach of intellect, For intellect is said to be the relative. (9.2)[3]
There is a lot of debate about the meaning of this verse in the various commentarial traditions, but the basic understanding is that the realization of the ultimate truth at its most complete level cannot be achieved by a dualistic and conceptual mind. To perceive the ultimate nature of self and all phenomena most completely requires a single-pointed meditative state which is free from all dualistic elaborations of conceptuality and of subject and object.[4]
Notes
- ↑ Helena Blankleder and Wulstan Fletcher (Padmakara Translation Group), trans., The Root Stanzas of the Middle Way: The Mulamadhyamakakarika, by Nāgārjuna (Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications, 2016), 86.
- ↑ Thupten Jinpa, trans., Illuminating the Intent: An Exposition of Candrakīrti's Entering the Middle Way, by Tsongkhapa (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2021), 223.
- ↑ Helena Blankleder and Wulstan Fletcher (Padmakara Translation Group), trans., The Way of the Bodhisattva: A Translation of the Bodhicharyāvatāra, by Śāntideva, rev. ed. (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2006), 137.
- ↑ For a more detailed discussion of this and similar verses which served as points of debate, see the page on chapter 9 of the Bodhicaryāvatāra in the Study Section
