The Two Truths in Mahayana Buddhism

Описание: Lara Braitstein PhD explains in a very accessible way how to approach understanding the two truths in Mahayana Buddhism. Spoiler alert! Lara answers the age-old question: is Santa Claus real? Lara is a featured Mind Trainer on Mindworks new Mahayana Journey to Wisdom courses series. https://mindworks.org/mahayana/

Teaching excerpt:
The two truths is an important underlying framework for approaching Mahayana Buddhism. It can be really challenging because many of us have grown up in a culture of how we think to think of truth as one thing - the heart of the matter. But in a Buddhist context, there isn't one truth; truth is quite multiple. The two truths are labeled or designated as conventional or relative truth and ultimate truth.

Truth is our way understanding of reality, how we know things, how we can know ourselves and our mind. Buddhism gives us a framework for approaching this underlying truth. Remember that both ultimate and conventional are described as truth. They are both addressing reality.
Regarding ultimate truth, it is beyond conceptuality and language. The ultimate truth tends to be described in terms of being unborn, unceasing, arisen beyond concepts. The ultimate truth is understood to be cognizable only by a Buddha, by a realized being.

Conventional truth is divided into two, the mistaken and true versions. A favorite example from Indian philosophy is the snake and the rope. You see something and you think it's a snake. So you're filled with fear. But then you realize it's a rope. The snake is the incorrect conventional truth and the rope is accurate conventional truth. You are using your faculties of perception and clear reasoning to discriminate.

What is important is to understand how to apply this to our own mental processes. What emotions are, what is wisdom? How do we work with it? How do we understand the teachings that make us useful to others, and to really abandon suffering and its causes?

Seeing the Buddhist teachings through these lenses permits us to hold at once in our mind that there is an experience of reality which is ultimate truth, that of Buddhas, and there is an experience of conventional reality that is helpful, useful and productive.

It's also important to remember that once someone achieves awakening, it's not that the regular world of words and objects and beings disappears in a cloud of smoke. Buddhas interact with beings. They feel compassion, they engage in the world, they communicate using language. So the conventional and the ultimate are very deeply intertwined.

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