Two Truths?

Buddhist traditions have long agreed that the Buddha was a strategist in the way he taught, particularly when it came to teaching the insights that lead to awakening.

Various ways of analyzing the Buddha’s strategies have been devised over the centuries, one of the most prominent—both in Theravada and Mahayana traditions—being the theory that the Buddha taught two levels of truth: conventional truth and ultimate truth.

In the Theravada version of this theory, conventional truths are expressed in personal terms: of individuals existing and acting in worlds. Ultimate truths are expressed in impersonal terms: of mental and physical qualities interacting, with no reference to whose qualities they are or where they are. Conventional truths adopt the language and—in the words of one scholar—the “naïve understanding” of everyday discourse.

Ultimate truths adopt a language that accords with events of the world as they actually are, in and of themselves, and as they appear in liberating insight.

…The Buddha used both levels of truth in instructing his disciples. For instance, when teaching the precepts or the practice of universal goodwill, he spoke in terms of conventional truths. When teaching insight, he—for the most part—spoke in terms of ultimate truths.

Now, if these two levels of truth were simply alternative manners of speaking, there would be no conflict between them. Theirs would be like the relationship between geology and sub-atomic physics. Geology speaks in terms of sedimentary and metamorphic rocks. Sub-atomic physics makes no mention of either kind of rock, but this doesn’t mean that it denies their reality, simply that it frames its issues in other terms.

However, proponents of the two-truth theory don’t regard ultimate truths simply as a manner of speaking. For them, ultimate truths are the description of the true nature of things. And instead of simply not bothering to speak of individuals or beings, ultimate truths actually deny their existence.

…Yet even though conventional truths and ultimate truths are based on mutually contradictory assumptions, the two-truth theory insists that they are both true.

…However, the Commentary never explains how two mutually contradictory descriptions of the world can both be true at the same time or how a convention that contradicts the ultimate nature of reality can be regarded as true.

Here it’s important to note that the theory of two levels of truth does not appear in the Pali suttas, or discourses, our most reliable records of the Buddha’s own words. It’s a later addition to the tradition.

This point has to be emphasized because the theory has become so basic to Buddhist philosophy over the centuries that even well-informed scholars and insight teachers believe that it came from the Buddha himself.

This reflection by Ajaan Geoff is from the book The Mirror of Insight: The Buddha as Strategist, “Chapter 1: Two Truths?”