Two Truths

by Kalu Rinpoche

The mistaken belief that painfully conditions all beings in cyclic existence arises from ignorance. That ignorance is an absence of awareness about the actual emptiness of the mind and its productions. In fact, the mistaken belief is ignorance about the actual mode of existence of all things.

All things, all phenomena, all objects of knowledge-that are, the external universe and all its beings, everything we experience in terms of forms, sounds, flavours, odours, tangible objects, and objects of mental awareness-all we are and everything we can know manifests by the power of the mind's propensities, which are essentially empty.

The mind is neither existent nor nonexistent. Likewise, the phenomena it produces are neither completely illusory nor completely real. As we ordinarily experience them, they are relatively real, but from an ultimate perspective, that relative reality is illusory.

THE TWO TRUTHS

All things can be viewed according to two levels of reality: the relative or conventional level and the ultimate level. These two truths correspond to two points of view, two visions of reality: the relative truth or view is relatively or conventionally true but ultimately illusory, and the ultimate truth or view is definitively true, the authentic experience beyond all illusion.

All samsaric perceptions are experiences of relative truth. Nirvana, which is beyond illusions and samsara's suffering, is the level of ultimate truth. Therefore, for example, the experiences of a hell-realm being are quite real from a relative viewpoint, while from an ultimate perspective those perceptions are illusory. This means that a being who finds itself in a hell realm really does experience suffering there: from its perspective, its experiences and suffering are real and quite hellish. But from an ultimate viewpoint, hell does not exist at all; it is actually only a projection, a production of a conditioned mind whose nature is emptiness.

Suffering comes from not recognising the emptiness of things, which results in our attributing to them a reality that they don't actually have. This grasping at things as real subjects us to painful experiences.

We can get a better understanding of this by using the example of a dream. When someone has a nightmare, that person suffers. For the dreamer, the nightmare is real; in fact, it is the only reality the dreamer knows. And yet the dream has no tangible reality and is not actually "real"; it has no reality outside of the dreamer's own conditioned mind, outside of the dreamer's own karma. From an ultimate perspective, it is in fact an illusion. The dreamer's illusion is in failing to recognise the nature of his experiences. Ignorant of what they actually are, the dreamer takes his own productions and the creations of his own mind to be an autonomous reality; thus deluded, he is frightened by his own projections and thereby creates suffering for himself. The delusion is to perceive as real what actually is not. Buddha Sakyamuni taught that all the realms of cyclic or conditioned existence, all things, and all our experiences are, in general, illusory appearances that cannot be considered as either truly real or completely illusory. He demonstrated this dual nature using the example of the appearance of the moon on the surface of a body of water:

The nature of all things and all appearances

Is like the reflection of the moon on water.

The moon reflected on the surface of a pool is real insofar as it is visible there, but its reality is only a relative, illusory appearance because the moon on the water is just a reflection. It is neither truly real nor completely illusory. From this perspective, we can refer to relative truth as the truth of appearances. Buddha Sakyamuni used other examples, saying that all things are like a projection, a hallucination, a rainbow, a shadow, a mirage, a mirror image, and an echo; outside of a simple appearance resulting from the "functionality'' of interrelated factors, nothing has existence in, of, or by itself.

It can really help us to understand this, because, although they have no true existence, we attach to all of these things as though they were real. The objective of Buddha's teaching is to dissolve this fixation, which is the source of all illusions and is as tenacious as our own karmic conditioning.

KARMA, INTERDEPENDENCE, AND EMPTINESS

Within the concept of karma, there is no notion of destiny or fatalism; we only reap what we sow. We experience the results of our own actions. I? The notion of karma is closely connected with that of dependent arising, or tendrel in Tibetan. The chain of karma is also the interaction of tendre, or interdependent factors whose causes and results mutually give rise to one another. 

The Tibetan word tendrel means interaction, interconnection, interrelation, interdependence, or interdependent factors. All things, all our experiences, are tendrel, which is to say they are events that exist because of the relationship between interrelated factors. This idea is essential to the understanding of Dharma in general and, in particular, how the mind transmigrates in cyclic existence.

To understand what tendrel or dependent arising, is, let's take an example. When you hear the sound of a bell, ask yourself, What makes the sound? Is it the body of the bell, the clapper, the hand that moves the bell to and fro, or the ears that hear the sound? None of these elements alone produces the sound; it results from the interaction of all these factors. All the elements are necessary for the sound of a bell to be perceived, and they are necessary not in succession but simultaneously. The sound is an event whose existence depends on the interaction of those elements; that is tendrel.

Similarly, all conditioned lives, all samsaric phenomena, result from a multiplicity of interactions which belong to the twelve links of dependent origination. These twelve factors give rise to each other mutually. It is not that each factor causes the one that occurs next in time; as with the bell example, they are simultaneous, coexistent. It is necessary that the twelve factors be present at the same moment in order to produce a conditioned existence. The bondage of causes and results of these interdependent factors that generate illusion is the action of samsara. Everything within samsara is karmically conditioned interrelationship; all our experiences are tendrel. The truth of appearances created by the bondage of dependent arisings is conventional or dualistic truth. This is how we ordinarily live. It is ruled by karma. The empty nature of what exists at the relative level is what we call ultimate truth. Truly understanding dependent arising allows us to go beyond the conditioning of the relative or conventional level and to attain the peace and freedom of unconditionality. When you completely understand dependent arising, you also understand emptiness. And that is freedom.

Therefore, wisdom, or knowledge, is not fundamentally separate from illusion. That is why it is often said that samsara and nirvana are not different and that a form of wisdom is latent in ignorance. Logic and reasoning ultimately lead to such statements, which appear to be contradictory and illogical. Logic and reasoning can go on ad infinitum. They are part of the samsaric process and ultimately lead to contradictions. Even so, since they are tools that can bring about realisation of the truth, they are useful and should not be rejected, even if they are eventually released at the time of realising emptiness.

But be careful. The correct understanding of emptiness is in no way nihilistic. If we decide that everything is empty and without reality, that the state of Buddhahood has no real existence, that karmic causality is empty, and that therefore there is no reason to bother, this would be a nihilistic view, even worse than the view that takes relative things to be truly existent. Nihilistic conceptions are a more serious mistake than the realist conceptions that take phenomena to exist as they appear.

The correct understanding of emptiness lies between the two extremes of eternalism (believing things to be inherently or truly existent) and nihilism (believing them not to exist at all). This middle way view eliminates wrong ideas and ultimately allows us to go beyond conceptualised notions about reality. But beware: to conceive of emptiness closes the door to liberation. The great lineage holder Saraha said: 

To consider the world as real is a brutish attitude.

To consider it as empty is even more savage.

And Nagarjuna said:

Those who conceive of emptiness are incurable.