Concept
6 readings
Two truths
Concept · 6 readings
In the selected Madhyamaka interpretation, conventional discourse and ultimate truth are related, but they are not two separate worlds.
All readings
6 readings · Title A–Z
Guided course · Module 7 · Lesson 36
Debate, commentary and liberation in Tibet
Tsongkhapa and Gorampa disagree about what emptiness denies. What does their disagreement mean for ordinary objects, and what remains disputed about conventional and ultimate understanding?
Guided course · Module 3 · Lesson 12
Does emptiness mean that nothing exists?
Nāgārjuna replies to the objection that emptiness would make change impossible: intrinsic nature, he argues, is what would rule change out. Denying intrinsic nature leaves ordinary distinctions, actions and their consequences in place.
Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths · Lesson 6 of 8
What is left of the two truths?
Once no ultimately real elements remain, what do conventional and ultimate truth mean? The lesson compares three readings of ultimate truth and asks whether conventional claims can still be right or wrong.
Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths · Lesson 1 of 8
What would it mean to exist on one’s own?
Nāgārjuna argues that nothing has intrinsic nature, a nature it would have independently of everything else. The lesson states the Abhidharma view he opposes as a serious theory, then reads chapter 15’s middle path between “it exists” and “it does not exist”.
Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths · Lesson 3 of 8
Where does the going happen?
Going cannot be found on the path already traversed, the path not yet traversed or the path being traversed, Nāgārjuna argues. The lesson compares two readings of the argument and explains why “ultimately, there is no going” does not say that nothing moves.
Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths · Lesson 5 of 8
Who acts, and who answers for it?
If agent and action lack intrinsic nature, can anyone answer for what they do? The lesson follows chapter 17 on action and its results and weighs the charge that Madhyamaka is a form of nihilism.
Study this in sequence
Nāgārjuna: emptiness, dependence and the two truths
Follow Nāgārjuna’s arguments that nothing has an intrinsic nature of its own, from causes and motion to persons, the two truths and the charge that the argument undermines itself. Ask what the arguments leave standing: can things exist, change and matter without such a nature?