Two truths doctrine

The Buddhist doctrine of the two truths (Sanskrit: dvasatya, Wylie: bden pa gnyis) differentiates between two levels of satya (Sanskrit; Pāli: sacca; meaning "truth" or "reality") in the teaching of Śākyamuni Buddha: the "conventional" or "provisional" (saṁvṛti) truth, and the "absolute" or "ultimate" (paramārtha) truth.

The exact meaning varies between the various Buddhist schools and traditions. The best known interpretation is from the Mādhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism, whose founder was the 3rd-century Indian Buddhist monk and philosopher Nāgārjuna. For Nāgārjuna, the two truths are epistemological truths. The phenomenal world is accorded a provisional existence. The character of the phenomenal world is declared to be neither real nor unreal, but logically indeterminable. Ultimately, all phenomena are empty (śūnyatā) of an inherent self or essence due to the non-existence of the self (anātman), but temporarily exist depending on other phenomena (pratītya-samutpāda).

In Chinese Buddhism, the Mādhyamaka thought is accepted, and the two truths doctrine is understood as referring to two ontological truths. Reality exists in two levels, a relative level and an absolute level. Based on their understanding of the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, the Chinese Buddhist monks and philosophers supposed that the teaching of the Buddha-nature (tathāgatagarbha) was, as stated by that Sūtra, the final Buddhist teaching, and that there is an essential truth above emptiness (śūnyatā) and the two truths.

The doctrine of emptiness (śūnyatā) is an attempt to show that it is neither proper nor strictly justifiable to regard any metaphysical system as absolutely valid. The two truths doctrine doesn't lead to the extreme philosophical views of eternalism (or absolutism) and annihilationism (or nihilism), but strikes a middle course (madhyamāpratipada) between them.

Etymology and meaning

Satya is usually taken to mean "truth", but also refers to "a reality", "a genuinely real existent". Satya (Sat-yá) is derived from Sat and ya. Sat means being, reality, and is the present participle of the root as, "to be" (PIE *h₁es-; cognate to English is). Ya and yam means "advancing, supporting, hold up, sustain, one that moves". As a composite word, Satya and Satyam imply that "which supports, sustains and advances reality, being"; it literally means, "that which is true, actual, real, genuine, trustworthy, valid".

The two truths doctrine states that there is:

Provisional or conventional truth (Sanskrit saṁvṛti-satya, Pāli sammuti sacca, Tibetan kun-rdzob bden-pa), which describes our daily experience of a concrete world, and
Ultimate truth (Sanskrit paramārtha-satya, Pāli paramattha sacca, Tibetan: don-dam bden-pa), which describes the ultimate reality as śūnyatā, empty of concrete and inherent characteristics.

The 7th-century Buddhist philosopher Chandrakīrti suggests three possible meanings of saṁvṛti:

complete covering or the "screen" of ignorance which hides truth;
existence or origination through dependence, mutual conditioning;
worldly behavior or speech behavior involving designation and designatum, cognition and cognitum.

The conventional truth may be interpreted as "obscurative truth" or "that which obscures the true nature" as a result. It is constituted by the appearances of mistaken awareness. Conventional truth would be the appearance that includes a duality of apprehender and apprehended, and objects perceived within that. Ultimate truths are phenomena free from the duality of apprehender and apprehended.

Background

The teaching of Śākyamuni Buddha may be viewed as an eightfold path (mārga) of release from the causes of suffering (duḥkha). The First Noble Truth equates life-experiences with pain and suffering. The Buddha's language was simple and colloquial. Naturally, various statements of the Buddha at times appear contradictory to each other. Later Buddhist teachers were faced with the problem of resolving these contradictions.

The 3rd-century Indian Buddhist monk and philosopher Nāgārjuna and other Buddhist philosophers after him introduced an exegetical technique of distinguishing between two levels of truth, the conventional and the ultimate.

A similar method is reflected in the Brahmanical exegesis of the Vedic scriptures, which combine the ritualistic injunctions of the Brahmanas and speculative philosophical questions of the Upanishads as one whole "revealed" body of work, thereby contrasting the jñāna kāņḍa with karmakāņḍa.

Origin and development

The concept of the two truths is associated with the Mādhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism, whose founder was the 3rd-century Indian Buddhist monk and philosopher Nāgārjuna, and its history traced back to the earliest years of Buddhism.

Early Indian Buddhism

Theravāda

In the Pāli Canon, the distinction is not made between a lower truth and a higher truth, but rather between two kinds of expressions of the same truth, which must be interpreted differently. Thus a phrase or passage, or a whole Sūtra, might be classified as neyyattha, samuti, or vohāra, but it is not regarded at this stage as expressing or conveying a different level of truth.

Nītattha (Pāli; Sanskrit: nītārtha), "of plain or clear meaning" and neyyattha (Pāli; Sanskrit: neyartha), "[a word or sentence] having a sense that can only be guessed". These terms were used to identify texts or statements that either did or did not require additional interpretation. A nītattha text required no explanation, while a neyyattha one might mislead some people unless properly explained:

Saṃmuti or samuti (Pāli; Sanskrit: saṃvṛti), meaning "common consent, general opinion, convention", and paramattha (Pāli; Sanskrit: paramārtha), meaning "ultimate", are used to distinguish conventional or common-sense language, as used in metaphors or for the sake of convenience, from language used to express higher truths directly. The term vohāra (Pāli; Sanskrit: vyavahāra, "common practice, convention, custom" is also used in more or less the same sense as samuti.

The Theravādin commentators expanded on these categories and began applying them not only to expressions but to the truth then expressed:

Prajnāptivāda

The Prajñaptivāda school took up the distinction between the conventional (saṃvṛti) and ultimate (paramārtha) truths, and extended the concept to metaphysical-phenomenological constituents (dharma), distinguishing those that are real (tattva) from those that are purely conceptual, i.e., ultimately nonexistent (prajñāpti).

Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism

Mādhyamaka school

The distinction between the two truths (satyadvayavibhāga) was fully developed by Nāgārjuna (c. 150 – c. 250 CE), founder of the Mādhyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy. Mādhyamika philosophers distinguish between saṃvṛti-satya, "empirical truth", "relative truth", "truth that keeps the ultimate truth concealed", and paramārtha-satya, ultimate truth.

Saṃvṛti-satya can be further divided in tathya-saṃvṛti or loka-saṃvṛti, and mithya-saṃvṛti or aloka-saṃvṛti, "true saṃvṛti" and "false saṃvṛti". Tathya-saṃvṛti or "true saṃvṛti" refers to "things" which concretely exist and can be perceived as such by the senses, while mithya-saṃvṛti or "false saṃvṛti" refers to false cognitions of "things" which do not exist as they are perceived.

Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā provides a logical defense for the claim that all things are empty (śūnyatā) and devoid of any inherently-existing self-nature (anātman). Emptiness itself, however, is also shown to be "empty", and Nāgārjuna's assertion of "the emptiness of emptiness" prevents the mistake of believing that emptiness may constitute a higher or ultimate reality. Nāgārjuna's view is that "the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth". According to Siderits, Nāgārjuna is a "semantic anti-dualist" who posits that there are only conventional truths. Jay L. Garfield explains:

In Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, the two truths doctrine is used to defend the identification of dependent origination (pratītya-samutpāda) with emptiness itself (śūnyatā):

In Nāgārjuna's own words:

Nāgārjuna based his statement of the two truths on the Kaccāyanagotta Sutta. In this text, Śākyamuni Buddha, speaking to the monk Kaccāyana Gotta on the topic of right view, describes the middle course (madhyamāpratipada) between the extreme philosophical views of eternalism (or absolutism) and annihilationism (or nihilism):

According to the Tibetologist Alaka Majumder Chattopadhyaya, although Nāgārjuna presents his understanding of the two truths as a clarification of the teachings of the historical Buddha, the two truths doctrine as such is not part of the earliest Buddhist tradition.

Buddhist Idealism

Yogācāra

The Yogācāra school of Buddhist philosophy distinguishes the Three Natures and the Trikāya. The Three Natures are:

Paramarthika (transcendental reality), also referred to as Parinispanna in Yogācāra literature: The level of a storehouse of consciousness that is responsible for the appearance of the world of external objects. It is the only ultimate reality.
Paratantrika (dependent or empirical reality): The level of the empirical world experienced in ordinary life. For example, the snake-seen-in-the-snake.
Parikalpita (imaginary). For example, the snake-seen-in-a-dream.

Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra

The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, one of the earliest Mahāyāna Sūtras, took an idealistic turn in apprehending reality. Japanese Buddhist scholar D. T. Suzuki writes the following explanation:

East Asian Buddhism

When Buddhism was introduced to China by Buddhist monks from the Indo-Greek Kingdom of Gandhāra (now Afghanistan) and classical India between the 2nd century BCE and 1st century CE, the two truths teaching was initially understood and interpreted through various ideas in Chinese philosophy, including Confucian and Taoist ideas which influenced the vocabulary of Chinese Buddhism. As such, Chinese translations of Buddhist texts and philosophical treatises made use of native Chinese terminology, such as "T’i -yung" (體用, "Essence and Function") and "Li-Shih" (理事, Noumenon and Phenomenon) to refer to the two truths. These concepts were later developed in several East Asian Buddhist traditions, such as the Wéishí and Huayan schools. The doctrines of these schools also influenced the ideas of Chán (Zen) Buddhism, as can be seen in the Verses of the Five Ranks of Tōzan and other Chinese Buddhist texts.

Chinese thinkers often took the two truths to refer to two ontological truths (two ways of being, or levels of existence): a relative level and an absolute level. For example, Taoists at first misunderstood emptiness (śūnyatā) to be akin to the Taoist notion of non-being. In the Mādhyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy, the two truths are two epistemological truths: two different ways to look at reality. The Sānlùn school (Chinese Mādhyamikas) thus rejected the ontological reading of the two truths. However, drawing on Buddha-nature thought, such as that of the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, and on Yogācāra sources, other Chinese Buddhist philosophers defended the view that the two truths did refer to two levels of reality (which were nevertheless non-dual and inferfused), one which was conventional, illusory and impermanent, and another which was eternal, unchanging and pure.

Huayan school

The Huayan school or "Flower Garland" school is a tradition of Chinese Buddhist philosophy that flourished in medieval China during the Tang period (7th–10th centuries CE). It is based on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, and on a lengthy Chinese interpretation of it, the Huayan Lun. The name "Flower Garland" is meant to suggest the crowning glory of profound understanding.

The most important philosophical contributions of the Huayan school were in the area of its metaphysics. It taught the doctrine of the mutual containment and interpenetration of all phenomena, as expressed in Indra's net. One thing contains all other existing things, and all existing things contain that one thing.

Distinctive features of this approach to Buddhist philosophy include:

Truth (or reality) is understood as encompassing and interpenetrating falsehood (or illusion), and vice versa
Good is understood as encompassing and interpenetrating evil
Similarly, all mind-made distinctions are understood as "collapsing" in the enlightened understanding of emptiness (a tradition traced back to the Indian Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna)

Huayan teaches the Four Dharmadhātu, four ways to view reality:

All dharmas are seen as particular separate events;
All events are an expression of the absolute;
Events and essence interpenetrate;
All events interpenetrate.

Absolute and relative in Zen Buddhism

Dōgen (1200–1253), Japanese Zen master and founder of the Sōtō school of Zen

The teachings of Chán (Zen) Buddhism are expressed by a set of polarities: Buddha-nature (tathāgatagarbha), emptiness (śūnyatā), absolute-relative, sudden and gradual enlightenment (bodhi).

The Prajnāpāramitā Sūtras and Mādhyamaka philosophy emphasized the non-duality of form and emptiness: "form is emptiness, emptiness is form", as it's written in the Heart Sutra. The idea that the ultimate reality is present in the daily world of relative reality fitted into the Chinese culture, which emphasized the mundane world and society. But this does not tell how the absolute is present in the relative world. This question is answered in such schemata as the Verses of the Five Ranks of Tōzan and the Oxherding Pictures.

Essence-function in Korean Buddhism

The polarity of absolute and relative is also expressed as "essence-function". The absolute is essence, the relative is function. They can't be seen as separate realities, but interpenetrate each other. The distinction does not "exclude any other frameworks such as neng-so or "subject-object" constructions", though the two "are completely different from each other in terms of their way of thinking".

In Korean Buddhism, essence-function is also expressed as "body" and "the body's functions":

A metaphor for essence-function is "A lamp and its light", a phrase from the Platform Sutra, where "essence" is the lamp and "function" its light.

Tibetan Buddhism

Nyingma school

The Nyingma tradition is the oldest of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. It is founded on the first translations of Buddhist scriptures from Sanskrit into Tibetan (8th century CE). Tibetan Buddhist philosopher and polymath Mipham the Great (1846–1912) in his commentary to the Madhyamālaṃkāra of Śāntarakṣita (725–788) says:

The following sentence from Mipham the Great's exegesis of Śāntarakṣita's Madhyamālaṃkāra highlights the relationship between the absence of the four extremes (mtha'-bzhi) and the non-dual or indivisible two truths (bden-pa dbyer-med):

Understanding in other traditions

Jainism

The 2nd-century Digambara Jain monk and philosopher Kundakunda distinguishes between two perspectives of truth:

Vyāvahāranaya or "mundane perspective".
Niścayanaya or "ultimate perspective", also called "supreme" (pāramārtha) and "pure" (śuddha).

For Kundakunda, the mundane realm of truth is also the relative perspective of normal folk, where the workings of karma operate and where things emerge, last for a certain time, and then perish. The ultimate perspective, meanwhile, is that of the liberated individual soul (jīvatman), which is "blissful, energetic, perceptive, and omniscient".

Advaita Vedānta

The Advaita school of Vedānta philosophy took over from the Buddhist Mādhyamaka school the idea of levels of reality. Usually two levels are being mentioned, but the school's founder Ādi Śaṅkara uses sublation as the criterion to postulate an ontological hierarchy of three levels:

Pāramārthika: the absolute level, "which is absolutely real and into which both other reality levels can be resolved". This experience can't be sublated by any other experience.
Vyāvahārika (or saṃvṛti-satya, empirical or pragmatical): "our world of experience, the phenomenal world that we handle every day when we are awake". It is the level in which both jīva (living creatures or individual souls) and Īśvara (Supreme Being) are true; here, the material world is also true.
Prāthibhāsika (apparent reality or unreality): "reality based on imagination alone". It is the level in which appearances are actually false, like the illusion of a snake over a rope, or a dream.

Mīmāṃsā

Chattopadhyaya notes that the 8th-century Mīmāṃsā philosopher Kumārila Bhaṭṭa rejected the two truths doctrine in his Shlokavartika. Bhaṭṭa was highly influential with his defence of Vedic orthodoxy and rituals against the Buddhist rejection of Brahmanical beliefs and ritualism. Some believe that his influence contributed to the decline of Buddhism in India, since his lifetime coincides with the period in which Buddhism began to disappear from the Indian subcontinent.

According to Kumārila, the two truths doctrine fundamentally is an idealist doctrine, which conceals the fact that "the theory of the nothingness of the objective world" is absurd:

Correspondence with Pyrrhonism

Thomas McEvilley notes a correspondence between Greek Pyrrhonism and the Buddhist Mādhyamaka school:

Thus in Pyrrhonism "absolute truth" corresponds to acatalepsy and "conventional truth" to phantasiai.

Notes

References

Sources

Published sources

Web-sources

External links

Works related to Saṃyukta Āgama 301: Kātyāyana Gotra Sūtra at Wikisource

Barbara O'Brien: The Two Truths. What Is Reality?