Thusness · John Tan

After Anatta · The Logic · Step 4

The Two Truths

This moment ceases as it arises. Does it arise, or does it cease?

The koan has two answers, and they do not conflict. Conventionally, the moment arises and ceases. The train leaves and arrives, and we can say when. Looked for, nothing that arises and nothing that ceases is found.

The tradition calls these the two truths. Step 1 met them in the whirlpool, "one fact, seen from two sides", and Step 3 in the chariot, not found and still ridden. They are not two worlds or two levels. There is one moment, met two ways.

The verse

Nāgārjuna introduces them at the turning point of his work. The Buddhas teach the Dharma by relying on two truths: the conventional truth of the world, and the truth in the ultimate sense (MMK 24.8). Those who do not understand the distinction between them do not understand the deep reality in the Buddha's teaching (24.9).

The word for "conventional" is saṃvṛti, and Candrakīrti draws out three meanings in it. It means concealment, because ordinary seeing hides how things are by presenting them as existing from their own side. It means mutual dependence, because what is conventional exists only in dependence on other things. And it means worldly convention: the naming, signs and agreement we live by. The three belong together. Conventional truth is valid as dependence and as convention. It is mistaken only in the concealment, the innate habit that Step 2 called the real target.

Two answers to one question

Look at a station clock. We can say correctly when the train left and when it arrived. Now look for the leaving apart from the train, the platform, the clock and the name "departure". Nothing is found. This is how Nāgārjuna opens his whole work, praising the Buddha who taught dependent arising:

Without ceasing, without arising, without annihilation, without permanence, not one thing and not many, without coming and without going.

Nāgārjuna, Middle Way, Chapter 1, homage

"Without arising" is not a denial that the train left. It is said of dependent arising itself. Not found never means did not happen. The two answers meet the same journey.

Seen with the logic of substance. The departure is a thing, there on its own, and arising and ceasing happen to it. So the two answers seem to compete. Either it really arises or it really ceases, and if analysis finds nothing, the journey must be unreal. The two truths then look like rival reports, or two floors.

Seen with the logic of dependency. The departure is not a thing that has arising and ceasing. As Step 1 put it, the moment is merely designated as arising or ceasing, upon conditions. "Leaving" is picked out against the train standing at the platform before, "arriving" against the train standing at the next platform after, and both are correct. Looked for, no journey stands behind them to do either. Nothing competes.

It is like the stairs of Step 1: "up" for someone climbing, "down" for someone coming down, and really climbed either way. So with the moment: "arising" and "ceasing" are both true of it, from the side each is picked out.

Two kinds of correction

Walk into a garage at dusk. In the corner something lies coiled, and for a moment it is a snake. The heart jumps. Someone switches on the lamp: it is a rope. The fright goes, and you pick the rope up and tie down the load on the car. Later, out of curiosity, you look for the rope apart from its strands, its twist, its use and its name. You do not find one. The load stays tied.

Two corrections happened there, and they were not the same kind. The lamp corrected the snake into a rope. The search corrected nothing about the rope at all; it only removed the idea of a rope standing there from its own side. The koan's "looked for, not found" is the second kind.

Not two levels

Most of us carry a picture of reality in two storeys. In the physicalist version, the colours, sounds and tables we meet are a surface, and the real work is done backstage by particles or fields. In the spiritual version, the world of passing forms is a veil, and behind it is the Absolute: a pure Being, a Source, a cosmic Awareness that is truly real while everything else merely appears.

I lived in the second picture for years. The realisation of I AM was real and unmistakable, and it gave me exactly this shape: a pure, unchanging Witness on one side, and on the other a world that came and went before it. The Witness was the deeper floor. The world was the show.

The koan invites both. A physical moment of air waves behind the heard one. A timeless Now, or an awareness, behind the passing moments. Each keeps the "it" and moves it to another floor.

The two truths, read rightly, leave no room for either version. There is no hidden substrate, no backstage producer, no deeper dimension sitting underneath appearances, and no higher one floating above them. Appearance is not a cover over something more real. There is nothing behind it for it to cover. In Book 1 I call the two truths "non-dimensional" for this reason. They are not a map of two places. They are two ways of meeting one place.

One appearance, two truths the rope in the corner one appearance Conventional truth it ties, pulls and holds; not a snake: the lamp shows it valid, with standards Ultimate truth no rope found apart from its strands, use and name empty, and empty too Not two layers: no world behind, no world above.
The two truths (MMK 24.8–10). The same rope, or the same moment, is met as it works and as it is found under analysis. Neither is a second object, and neither is a level beneath or above the other.

Conventional truth is fully valid

"Conventional" sounds like a demotion, but that is the logic of substance speaking. Under the logic of dependency, conventional truth is the only kind of validity there is, and it is fully valid. A table, a rainbow, a bank account, a thought and a moment are all thoroughly real conventionally.

And convention has standards. That is the point of the rope. Step 3 gave Tsongkhapa's three checks: known to ordinary cognition, not overturned by another sound ordinary cognition, not overturned by analysis of how things ultimately are. The snake fails the second, because the lamp shows a rope. A rope existing from its own side fails the third, because the search finds no such rope. The rope as named, in dependence on its strands, passes all three. So the two truths do not flatten every view into "just convention". The everyday world can tell a rope from a snake, and it must.

Agreement works the same way, with no neutral stuff underneath it. I take this up at length in the essay The Illusion of the Given. Convention is not the opposite of truth. It is where truth, in every usable sense, lives. Why convention can work at all, with nothing behind it, is Step 7's question; here it is enough that it does.

Ultimate truth is not a hidden reality

Ultimate truth is not a hidden particle, not a pure Awareness behind the world, and not a timeless Now behind the moments. It is simply this: when any conventional thing is looked for apart from what it depends on, no own-nature is found. The ultimate truth of the departure is the departure's not being a departure from its own side. It is a truth about conventional things, not a second thing alongside them.

Ultimate truth is not a higher world. It is the emptiness of this one.

And it gets no exemption. Nāgārjuna's own summary says so: dependent arising is what we call emptiness; that is a designation in dependence; that itself is the middle way (24.18). Single it out as "the ultimate" and it too is designated, and empty. There is no level that stays.

Each needs the other

The two truths also come in a definite order. Without relying on convention, the ultimate cannot be taught; without coming to the ultimate, nirvāṇa is not attained (24.10). The koan itself is convention. Convention is the ladder, and it is not thrown away at the top, because there is no top. The ultimate is only ever the emptiness of conventional things.

Taken apart, each truth turns into a fixed object: solid moments really arising and ceasing, and a still ground behind them. Joined, they dissolve each other's solidity.

One moment, met two ways

Mipham offers a second way of drawing the line that helps here. In his second model, the two truths are told apart by whether experience accords with how things are. The cold of the ice in Step 2, met as a cold thing over there and a feeler over here is discordant, and so "conventional" in the sense of mistaken. The same coldness met without that fixing is concordant, and so "ultimate" in the sense of authentic. Nothing different appears in the two cases. What differs is whether the appearance is misread.

"Authentic" here names a way of meeting appearance, not a luminous reality hidden behind it. Concordant experience is itself empty. Nāgārjuna says there is not the slightest gap between saṃsāra and nirvāṇa (25.19–20). That does not mean a confused, grasping life is already free. It means they are not two territories. They are one appearance, misread and suffering, or seen through and at peace. After anatta, presence did not fade into some deeper truth. It became more vivid, because it was no longer pushed behind experience as something on its own side. Nothing was added to the world, and nothing was taken away. What changed was how it was held.

Whose time?

Raise one hand and lower the other. For the raised hand, time passes a little faster. In a TEDx talk in Italy, Carlo Rovelli showed it with two watches, one held high and one held low. The difference is tiny, but the best clocks have measured it over a height of about thirty centimetres. GPS satellites sit high and move fast, so their clocks run about 38 millionths of a second a day ahead of ours. Left uncorrected, your phone's map would drift by about ten kilometres a day.

Conventionally, your watch is right, and the engineers' correction is right too. Looked for, no single time is found, ticking the same for everyone, apart from where the clock is and how it moves. Two truths, and the map still gets you home.

The same logic, beyond the moment

Every thing has the koan's two answers. Asked conventionally, it is there and it works. Looked for, it is not found standing on its own. The moment is only the plainest case.

The self. Conventionally, "I wrote this" is correct. It can be checked: the drafts, the dates, the hands that typed. It is not a slip of grammar or a polite fiction. Looked for, no I is found apart from the body, the mind and the history it is named on, and none is found among them either. That does not leave two selves, a false one and a true one hiding behind it. There is one self, met two ways: named and fully working, and not found when looked for.

An object. Is a ship whose every plank has been replaced the same ship? On the register, yes; for the museum that kept the old planks, perhaps not. Each answer holds within its framework, and none is found apart from it. That is not arbitrary: a forged passport still fails. Identity is reliable picking-out, not a sameness stored inside the wood. Conventionally, the ship sails and is the same ship. Looked for, no ship is found apart from its planks, its use and its name.

A cause. Conventionally, fire burns. Put a hand in it and the hand is hurt, and we can say what caused what. That is not a guess; it is how anyone learns to cook. Looked for, no power to burn is found in the fire on its own. The burning needs the fuel, the air, the hand and the heat together, and it is not found in any one of them, nor apart from them. Not found does not mean the hand is not burnt. It means nothing burns from its own side.

The person. The friend you love is fully real conventionally. They keep promises, remember what you said, and grieve when things go wrong. Looked for, they are not found as a self standing on its own, apart from their body, mind and history, nor as any one of them. Neither truth cancels the other. Seeing that your friend is not found takes nothing from the love. It takes away only the idea of someone fixed from their own side. Love, sorrow and care stay exactly where they were.

One appearing. Self, ship, fire and friend are one appearing, met two ways. Conventionally, it is singled out and works. Looked for, it is not found. These are not two layers. Being singled out is already dependence, and dependence is already not being found. The two truths are this one vivid appearing, seen from two sides. (See What the Logic Is Looking At.)

Try it

  • The scale. Stand on a scale and read the number: that answer is correct, and a doctor can use it. Then look for the weight in your body alone, apart from the earth that pulls it and the floor that pushes back. Notice that the second look takes nothing from the first. One weight, met two ways.
  • The rope. Recall a time you mis-saw something, a coat on a chair taken for a person. Notice how cleanly the second look corrected the first. Convention has standards.
  • The higher floor. When emptiness, or a timeless Now, begins to feel like a vast, deeper reality behind things, look for it apart from the moments it is the emptiness of. Notice that nothing extra is found.

In the chain: this page goes with The Illusion of the Given (5 of 7); Vivid and Nowhere (4 of 7). The chain starts at Seeing Comes First.

In the books

Talks

Words to know

Two truths
Conventional and ultimate: one appearance, as it works and as it is found under analysis. Not two worlds or two levels.
Conventional truth (saṃvṛti-satya)
The world as it appears, is named and works. Fully valid, with standards for telling a rope from a snake.
Ultimate truth (paramārtha-satya)
The unfindability of own-nature in conventional things. Not a hidden reality, and empty too.
Concealment
One sense of saṃvṛti: ordinary seeing presenting things as existing from their own side. The only mistaken part of convention.
Two-tiered picture
Reality as a surface of appearances over a deeper real level, physical or spiritual. What the two truths do not mean.
Concordant and discordant
Mipham's second model: the same appearance met without fixing, or with it. Names a way of meeting, not a ground.