Buddhist perspectives on ethics and emptiness.

All lineages of Tibetan Buddhism today claim allegiance to the philosophy of the Middle Way, the exposition of emptiness propounded by the second-century Indian master Nagarjuna. But not everyone interprets it the same way. A major faultline runs through Tibetan Buddhism around the interpretation of what are called the two truths-the deceptive truth of conventional appearances and the ultimate truth of emptiness. An understanding of this faultline illuminates the beliefs that separate the Gelug descendents of Tsongkhapa from contemporary Dzogchen (...) and Mahamudra adherents.The Two Truths Debate digs into the debate of how the two truths are defined and how they are related by looking at two figures, one on either side of the faultline, and shows how their philosophical positions have dramatic implications for how one approaches Buddhist practice and how one understands enlightenment itself. (shrink)

The Two Truths in Chinese Buddhism, Chang-Qing Shih, pp. xviii, 401. Rs. 695. ISBN 81-208-2035-5.

The distinction between "the two truths" was initially developed to resolve seeming contradictions in the Buddha's teachings.1 The Buddha teaches that persons should act compassionately, that persons will be reincarnated, and that persons do not exist. The first two lessons seem inconsistent with the third. Consistency could be restored by distinguishing kinds of truth: the first and second lessons are conventionally true, but it is conventionally but not ultimately true that persons exist.2In addition to this semantic distinction, there is (...) an ontological distinction between modes of being that also promises to restore consistency. As many note, "the two truths" is a distinction between entities at least as much as... (shrink)

ABSTRACT The objective of this article is to contribute to the understanding of Nāgārjuna's 'two truths' doctrine as presented in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. For that purpose, we argue that 'two truths' doctrine the basic structural framework for the operational functionality of upāya of upāya, perhaps the most important epistemological/pedagogical notion of Mahāyāna Buddhism. RESUMO O objetivo deste artigo é contribuir para a compreensão da doutrina das "duas verdades", tal como presente no Mūlamadhyamakakārikā de Nāgārjuna. Argumentamos, para tanto, que a (...) doutrina das "duas verdades" constitui o fundamento estrutural básico para a funcionalidade operacional do upāya, que é, talvez, a noção epistemológico-pedagógica mais importante do budismo Mahāyāna. (shrink)

Mādhyamikas argue that ultimate reality, which is without any delimitation and hence cannot be verbalized in itself, can be expressed in words on the basis of the attribution or superimposition of the basis for the application of the word. The denotation theory of ultimate reality Bhartṛhari advances in the Dravyasamuddeśa of his Vākyapadīya convincingly explains that, insofar as ultimate reality is spoken of, we must say that it is denoted by the word; ultimate reality is said to be ineffable only (...) in the sense that it is far from what is conveyed as something by the word; language is a pointer to the ultimate reality. The point that the application of a word to ultimate reality depends on the attribution of the basis for the application of the word to it naturally leads to an idea that one should not hypostatize the basis, although without resorting to it any word cannot be used to convey the ultimate reality; otherwise, it would have to be said that the ultimate reality to which the word is applied has in essence the property which serves as the basis. Such a property is precisely what the Mādhyamikas consider to be the svabhāva ‘intrinsic nature’. What they understand by the term śūnyatā is precisely that everything has no real basis for the application of the word to it. (shrink)

How is it possible to say that truth can be of one kind at the conventional level and totally different in the ultimate plane? As Matilal ( 1971 , p. 154) points out, Kumārila (ca. 600–650), a Mīmāṃsaka philosopher, claims that the Buddhist doctrine of two truths is “a kind of philosophical ‘double-talk’.” It is Prajñākaragupta (ca. 750–810), a Buddhist logician, who tries to give a direct answer to this question posed by Kumārila from the Buddhist side. He argues (...) that even a Mīmāṃsaka cannot demonstrate the validity ( prāmāṇya ) of the Veda without accepting two truth levels. His point is this. Consider the proposition to be proved: the Veda is valid. If the Veda is already known as valid, then it is useless to prove this proposition. But if it is already known as invalid, then it is impossible to prove this proposition. Therefore in the argument to prove the proposition, the Veda is not to be regarded either as valid or as invalid. This means that at the first stage of the argument one has the concept of the Veda as neutral in validity. However, as soon as one acquires the knowledge of the Veda as valid through the argument, one has to repudiate such a conception of the Veda. The acceptance of the Veda as neutral in validity is to the acceptance of the Veda as valid as the conventional truth is to the ultimate truth. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations was the breakthrough of phenomenology. What made it a breakthrough was the new way of explicating truth or evidence as self-givenness or adequacy. Husserl did however also have another interpretation of truth: evidence as indubitability or certainty of apodicticity. Originally Husserl thought that apodicticity increases the evidence of something already adequately given. Yet, in the first Cartesian Meditation Husserl differentiates the two modes of evidence. In this article the way to this split up of evidence is (...) elaborated with the help of some recent publications in Husserliana. It is also suggested that the fact that Husserl has two separate views on truth is one reason for the dispersed state of Husserl-research. This article argues that Husserl's early view on evidence adequacy is more original and interesting. The real philosophical challenge, however, is to be able to join the two modes of evidence under one strenge Wissenschaft. (shrink)

The teaching of the Buddha concerning Reality has recourse to Two Truths: the Mundane and the Highest Truth. Without knowing the distinction between the two, one does not know the profound point of the teachings. The Highest Truth cannot be taught apart from the Mundane, but without understanding the former, one does not apprehend nirvāna.

A view among methodologists is that truth and convergence are related in such a way that scienti…c theories in their historical order of appearance contribute to the convergence to an ultimate ideal theory. It is not a fact that science develops accordingly but rather a hypothetical thought experiment to explain why science develops at all. Here, a simple formal model is presented for scrutinizing the relations between two truths and convergence.

This paper proposes a critical analysis of that interpretation of the Nāgārjunian doctrine of the two truths as summarized—by both Mark Siderits and Jay L. Garfield—in the formula: “the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth”. This ‘semantic reading’ of Nāgārjuna’s theory, despite its importance as a criticism of the ‘metaphysical interpretations’, would in itself be defective and improbable. Indeed, firstly, semantic interpretation presents a formal defect: it fails to clearly and explicitly express that which it contains (...) logically; the previously mentioned formula must necessarily be completed by: “the conventional truth is that nothing is conventional truth”. Secondly, after having recognized what Siderits’ and Garfield’s analyses contain implicitly, other logical and philological defects in their position emerge: the existence of the ‘conventional’ would appear—despite the efforts of semantic interpreters to demonstrate quite the contrary—definitively inconceivable without the presupposition of something ‘real’; moreover, the number of verses in Nāgārjuna that are in opposition to the semantic interpretation (even if we grant semantic interpreters that these verses do not justify a metaphysical reconstruction of Nagarjuna’s doctrine) would seem too great and significant to be ignored. (shrink)

Kris McDaniel has recently proposed an interpretation of the distinction between conventional truth and ultimate truth, as that distinction is made within Abhidharma metaphysics. According to McDaniel's proposal, the distinction between conventional truth and ultimate truth is closely connected with a similar distinction between conventional existence and ultimate existence. What is more, the distinction between conventional existence and ultimate existence should be interpreted along ontological pluralist lines: the difference between things that ultimately exist and things that merely conventionally exist amounts (...) to a difference in the modes of being enjoyed by the things in question.One... (shrink)

This paper proposes an interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s doctrine of the two truths that considers saṃvṛti and paramārtha-satya two visions of reality on which the Buddhas, for soteriological and pedagogical reasons, build teachings of two types: respectively in agreement with (for example, the teaching of the Four Noble Truths) or in contrast to (for example, the teaching of emptiness) the category of svabhāva. The early sections of the article show to what extent the various current interpretations of the Nāgārjunian (...) doctrine of the dve satye—despite their sometimes even macroscopic differences—have a common tendency to consider the notion of śūnyatā as a teaching not based on, but equivalent to supreme truth. This equivalence—philologically questionable—leads to interpretative paths that prove inevitably aporetic: indeed, according to whether the interpretation of śūnyatā is ‘metaphysical’ or ‘anti-metaphysical’, it gives rise to readings of Nāgārjuna’s thought incompatible, respectively, with anti-metaphysical and realistic types of verses traceable in the works of the author of the Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikā (MMK). On the contrary, by giving more emphasis to the expression samupāśritya (“based on”), which recurs in MMK.24.8, and therefore, by epistemologically separating the notion of śūnyatā from the notion of paramārtha-satya (and of some of its conceptual equivalents such as nirvāṇa, tattva and dharmatā), we may obtain an interpretation—at once realistic and anti-metaphysical—of the theory of the two truths compatible with the vast majority (or even totality) of Nāgārjuna’s verses. (shrink)

Mipam (‘ju mi pham rgya mtsho, 1846–1912), an architect of the Nyingma (rnying ma) tradition of Tibet in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, articulates two distinct models of the two truths that are respectively reflected in Madhyamaka and Yogācāra Buddhist traditions. The way he positions these two models sheds light on how levels of description are at play in his integration of these traditions. Mipam positions one kind of two-truth model as the product of an ontological analysis (...) while another model can be seen as resulting from a phenomenological reduction. He accommodates both models into his systematic interpretation, and for him, each one has an important role to play in coming to understand the nature of the Buddhist truths of emptiness and Buddha-nature. Since each model reflects a different style of analysis, or a different perspective on truth, his presentation reveals how neither model alone has the last word on the nature of what is and how it is experienced. This paper analyzes the means by which he lays out these two models of the two truths, and explores the implications of their integration in his philosophical works. A primary concern for Mipam, and a factor that guides his attempt to integrate these two approaches to truth, is his aim to both induce authentic experience and true knowledge on the one hand, and represent reality and the experience of it on the other. These competing and complimentary objectives are a central focus around which both styles of critical reflection, and both models of the two truths, revolve. (shrink)

Epistemic two-dimensional semantics, advocated by Chalmers and Jackson, among others, aims to restore the link between necessity and a priority seemingly broken by Kripke, by showing how armchair access to semantic intensions provides a basis for knowledge of necessary a posteriori truths. The most compelling objections to E2D are that, for one or other reason, the requisite intensions are not accessible from the armchair. As we substantiate here, existing versions of E2D are indeed subject to such access-based objections. But, (...) we moreover argue, the difficulty lies not with E2D but with the typically presupposed conceiving-based epistemology of intensions. Freed from that epistemology, and given the right alternative—one where inference to the best explanation provides the operative guide to intensions—E2D can meet access-based objections, and fulfill its promise of restoring the desirable link between necessity and a priority. This result serves as a central application of Biggs and Wilson, according to which abduction is an a priori mode of inference. (shrink)

Longchen Rabjampa (1308–64), scholar of the Tibetan Buddhist Nyingma tradition, presents a novel doxographical taxonomy of the so-called Svātantrika branch of Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy, designating the Indian Mādhyamika Śrīgupta (c. 7th/8th century) as the exemplar of a Svātantrika sub-school which maintains that appearance and emptiness are metaphysically distinct. This paper compares Longchenpa’s characterization of this “distinct-appearance-and-emptiness” view with Śrīgupta’s own account of the two truths. I expose a significant disconnect between Longchenpa’s Śrīgupta and Śrīgupta himself and argue that the (...) impetus for Longchenpa’s doxographical innovation originates not in Buddhist India, but within his own Tibetan intellectual milieu, tracing back to his twelfth-century Sangpu Monastery predecessors, Gyamarwa and Chapa. (shrink)

What should the Buddhist attitude be to rebirth if it is believed to be inconsistent with current science? This chapter critically engages forms of Buddhist agnosticism that adopt a position of uncertainty about rebirth but nevertheless recommend ‘behaving as if’ it were true. What does it mean to behave as if rebirth were true, and are Buddhist agnostics justified in adopting this position? This chapter engages this question in dialogue with Mark Siderits’ reductionist analysis of the Buddhist doctrine of the (...) two truths, conventional and ultimate. Richard Hayes (1998) characterises talk of rebirth as a useful fiction. Siderits characterises talk of persons as a useful fiction and explains and justifies statements that involve it as conventionally true despite persons not featuring in our final or ultimate ontology. Does rebirth satisfy the same criteria to count as conventionally true, and does thinking of it in these terms help explain and justify what it might mean to behave as if rebirth were true? This chapter will defend a conditional yes to these questions. In the process, it will clarify what is distinctive about the traditional Buddhist approach to rebirth, provide an analysis of how the concept of rebirth might relate to practical outcomes, and address some limitations of this approach. (shrink)

This essay explores one of the first distinctively Sinitic reappropriations of Madhyamaka epistemology: Seng Zhao’s essay “Prajñā is Without Knowledge.” Seng Zhao’s work is here read as a deliberate collapse of the traditional Madhyamaka Two Truths into two simultaneous aspects of sagely wisdom, rather than a diachronic means-end relation, arriving at a crypto-Zhuangzian “trivialist” conclusion aimed at undermining epistemological bivalence at its roots. For Seng Zhao, because nothing can be established as true, nothing can be excluded as false. Here (...) the understanding of Emptiness has become not the exclusion of all views, but the inclusion of all views. This is rooted in Seng Zhao’s view that, to use Jan Westerhoff’s terms, the denial of substance-svabhāva is always also implicitly the denial of essence-svabhāva. Seng Zhao move from Emptiness as exclusion to Emptiness as inclusion, and from denial of ontological substance to denial of mutually exclusive determinateness, sets the agenda for the distinctive developments of classical Chinese Buddhist philosophy to come. (shrink)

It is common for philosophers from the Madhyamaka school of Indian Buddhist thought to offer a presentation of the two truths, ultimate truth ( param rthasatya ) and conventional truth ( sa v tisatya ), as a vehicle for presenting their views on the ontological status of entities. Though there is some degree of variance, generally ultimate truths are described as objects known by an awareness of knowing things as they are. Conventional truths are objects as conceived (...) by a mistaken awareness, one that superimposes a mode of existence onto objects that is not actually there. These two truths are contrasted (one is accurate; one is not) and used as a vehicle for understanding the ontological status of phenomena and the means by which they are known. ntarak ita (725-788 CE) was among the most important Madhyamaka thinkers in Indian Buddhist history, yet his presentation of the two truths has several features that signal its uniqueness. This paper will discuss two particular unique dimensions to ntarak ita's views on the two truths: his integration of aspects of Cittamatra/Yog c ra thinking, including the rejection of external objects, into his presentation of conventional truths, and the dynamic way in which conventional truths are not merely presented as objects of a mistaken awareness, but rather as an important soteriological step in the process of realizing the ultimate. This syncretic and dynamic integration of Yog c ra thought, where its ideas are fully engaged and incorporated into an over-arching Madhyamaka philosophical system is a key component to the thought of one of the most important, influential, and innovative figures in the late period of Indian Madhyamaka, and one which has yet to be fully acknowledged in secondary literature. (shrink)

It is common for philosophers from the Madhyamaka school of Indian Buddhist thought to offer a presentation of the two truths, ultimate truth ( param rthasatya ) and conventional truth ( sa v tisatya ), as a vehicle for presenting their views on the ontological status of entities. Though there is some degree of variance, generally ultimate truths are described as objects known by an awareness of knowing things as they are. Conventional truths are objects as conceived (...) by a mistaken awareness, one that superimposes a mode of existence onto objects that is not actually there. These two truths are contrasted (one is accurate; one is not) and used as a vehicle for understanding the ontological status of phenomena and the means by which they are known. ntarak ita (725-788 CE) was among the most important Madhyamaka thinkers in Indian Buddhist history, yet his presentation of the two truths has several features that signal its uniqueness. This paper will discuss two particular unique dimensions to ntarak ita's views on the two truths: his integration of aspects of Cittamatra/Yog c ra thinking, including the rejection of external objects, into his presentation of conventional truths, and the dynamic way in which conventional truths are not merely presented as objects of a mistaken awareness, but rather as an important soteriological step in the process of realizing the ultimate. This syncretic and dynamic integration of Yog c ra thought, where its ideas are fully engaged and incorporated into an over-arching Madhyamaka philosophical system is a key component to the thought of one of the most important, influential, and innovative figures in the late period of Indian Madhyamaka, and one which has yet to be fully acknowledged in secondary literature. (shrink)

The presupposition strategy is a widely adopted approach to understanding the catus.kot.i or tetralemmas that appear in Nāgārjuna’s works. According to this strategy, the apparent contradictions between the statements in the tetralemmas can be resolved by viewing them as making the false presupposition that there are entities that have svabhāva, independent existence or intrinsic nature, and hence as semantically deficient. Contemporary discussions of the strategy, however, do not take into account recent work on presupposition in linguistics and philosophy, much of (...) which claims either that presupposition is not a genuine linguistic phenomenon at all, or that it is pragmatic rather than semantic, thus threatening the presupposition strategy’s claim to resolve the contradictions in the tetralemmas. Based on a consideration of these critiques, this paper argues for three claims. First, the svabhāva presupposition is best viewed as pragmatic rather than semantic in nature. Second, viewing this presupposition as pragmatic rather than semantic does not in fact undermine the ability of the presupposition strategy to resolve the apparent inconsistencies. Finally, the best way of preserving the viability of the presupposition strategy is to adopt a model of the two truths that views emptiness not as interdependence, as is widely held, but as nonconceptuality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 115-125 [Access article in PDF] Pretending to Be Buddhist and Christian: Thich Nhat Hanh and the Two Truths of Religious Identity Jeffrey CarlsonDePaul University Nagarjuna replies: "The teaching by the Buddhas of the dharma has recourse to two truths: / The world-ensconced truth and the truth which is the highest sense. / Those who do not know the distribution (vibhagam) of the two (...) kinds of truth / Do not know the profound 'point' (tattva) in the teaching of the Buddha. / The highest sense [of the truth] is not taught apart from practical behavior, / And without having understood the highest sense one cannot understand nirvana. / Emptiness, having been dimly perceived, utterly destroys the slow-witted. / It is like a snake wrongly grasped or [magical] knowledge incorrectly applied." 1I would like to offer a response to Thich Nhat Hanh's book Living Buddha, Living Christ, a response which suggests that Nhat Hanh embodies and propounds this classical Buddhist notion of "two truths," in a way that sheds much light on the very notion of "religious identity."The fact that Buddhist teachings involve two kinds of truths is a familiar one in Buddhist studies. T.R.V. Murti describes worldly truth as "truth so called; truth as conventionally believed in common parlance.... It is the truth that does not do any violence to what obtains in our everyday world, being in close conformity with linguistic conventions and ideas." 2 Edward Conze notes that "... in some places the Buddhas have spoken of a 'self', in others they have taught a 'notself', and in addition they have also taught that there is neither a self nor a notself. Candrakirti convincingly explains this aphorism by pointing out that the Buddhas are physicians rather than teachers, that they always consider the mentality and spiritual maturity of their interlocutors, and vary their teachings accordingly." 3Ultimate truth, again characterized by Streng, is "the realization of dependent coorigination whereby there is no attachment to fabricated 'things'--not even to the formulation of dependent coorigination." 4 [End Page 115] 1. Thich Nhat Hanh on Conventional Truth and Religious Identity Thich Nhat Hanh writes: "We need roots to be able to stand straight and grow strong. When young people come to Plum Village, I always encourage them to practice in a way that will help them go back to their own tradition and get re-rooted. If they succeed at becoming reintegrated, they will be an important instrument in transforming and renewing their tradition." 5 An advocate of interreligious dialogue, he nonetheless maintains that "sharing does not mean wanting others to abandon their own spiritual roots and embrace your faith. That would be cruel. People are stable and happy only when they are firmly rooted in their own tradition and culture. To uproot them would make them suffer. There are already enough people uprooted from their tradition today, and they suffer greatly, wandering around like hungry ghosts, looking for something to fill their spiritual needs. We must help them return to their tradition." 6He cites the suffering caused by Christian missionaries who, he writes, "came to Vietnam several hundred years ago, [and] urged us to abandon the cult of ancestral worship and to abandon our Buddhist tradition. Later, when they offered to help us in refugee camps in Thailand and Hong Kong, they also urged us to give up our roots. The good will to help and to save us was there, but the correct understanding was not. People cannot be happy if they are rootless." 7Nhat Hanh tells a compelling story of six children he met in Sri Lanka. Coming upon them Nhat Hanh began chanting in Pali, "I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma. I take refuge in the Sangha." Nhat Hanh recounts that four of the children joined their palms and chanted, while the other two stood respectfully. "I motioned to the two children who were not chanting to join us. They smiled, placed their palms together and chanted in Pali, 'I... (shrink)

Jñanagarbha's Commentary on the Distinction between the Two Truths: An Eighth Century Handbook of Madhyamaka Philosophy. Malcolm David Eckel., State University of New York Press, Albany 1989. 220 pp. Hbk $34.50, pbk $10.95.

Based on a crowdsourced truth value judgment experiment, we provide empirical evidence challenging two classical views in semantics, and we develop a novel account of counterfactuals that combines ideas from inquisitive semantics and causal reasoning. First, we show that two truth-conditionally equivalent clauses can make different semantic contributions when embedded in a counterfactual antecedent. Assuming compositionality, this means that the meaning of these clauses is not fully determined by their truth conditions. This finding has a clear explanation in inquisitive semantics: (...) truth-conditionally equivalent clauses may be associated with different propositional alternatives, each of which counts as a separate counterfactual assumption. Second, we show that our results contradict the common idea that the interpretation of a counterfactual involves minimizing change with respect to the actual state of affairs. We propose to replace the idea of minimal change by a distinction between foreground and background for a given counterfactual assumption: the background is held fixed in the counterfactual situation, while the foreground can be varied without any minimality constraint. (shrink)

When do two sentences say the same thing, that is, express the same content? We defend two-component (2C) semantics: the view that propositional contents comprise (at least) two irreducibly distinct constituents, (1) truth-conditions, and (2) subject-matter. We contrast 2C with one-component (1C) semantics, focusing on the view that subject-matter is reducible to truth- conditions. We identify exponents of this view and argue in favor of 2C. An appendix proposes a general formal template for propositional 2C semantics.

I present two counterexamples to the recently back-in-favour truth-tracking account of knowledge: one involving a true belief resting on a counterfactually robust delusion, one involving a true belief acquired alongside a bunch of false beliefs. These counterexamples carry over to a recent modification of the theory due to Briggs and Nolan (2012), and seem invulnerable to a recent defence of the theory against known counterexamples, by Adams and Clarke (2005).

Presupposition, vagueness, and oddness can lead to some sentences failing to have a clear truth value. The homogeneity property of plural predication with definite descriptions may also create truth-value gaps: The books are written in Dutch is true if all relevant books are in Dutch, false if none of them are, and neither true nor false if, say, half of the books are written in Dutch. We study the projection property of homogeneity by deploying methods of general interest to identify (...) truth-value gaps. Method A consists in collecting both truth judgments and, independently, falsity judgments. The second method, employed in experiment series B and C, is based on one-shot ternary judgments: completely true vs. completely false vs. neither. After a calibration of these methods, we use them to demonstrate that homogeneity projects out of negation, the scope of universal sentences and the scope of non-monotonic quantifiers such as exactly two, to some extent. We assess our results in light of different theoretical approaches to homogeneity—approaches based on presuppositions, scalar implicatures, and something like supervaluations, respectively. We identify free parameters in these theories and assess various variants of them based on our results. Our experimental paradigms may be of broader significance insofar as they can be applied to other phenomena which result in the failure of a sentence to have a definite truth value. (shrink)