Two truths doctrine

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The Buddhist doctrine of the two truths (Sanskrit: dvasatya, Wylie: bden pa gnyis) differentiates between two levels of satya (Sanskrit; Pali: sacca; word meaning "truth" or "reality") in the teaching of the Śākyamuni Buddha: the "conventional" or "provisional" (saṁvṛti) truth, and the "ultimate" (paramārtha) truth.^[1][2]

The exact meaning varies between the various Buddhist schools and traditions. The best known interpretation is from the Mādhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism, whose founder was the Indian Buddhist monk and philosopher Nāgārjuna.^[1] For Nāgārjuna, the two truths are epistemological truths.^[2] The phenomenal world is accorded a provisional existence.^[2] The character of the phenomenal world is declared to be neither real nor unreal, but logically indeterminable.^[2] Ultimately, all phenomena are empty (śūnyatā) of an inherent self or essence due to the non-existence of the self (anattā), but temporarily exist depending on other phenomena (pratītyasamutpāda).^[1][2]

In Chinese Buddhism, the Mādhyamaka thought is accepted, and the two truths doctrine is understood as referring to two ontological truths. Reality exists of two levels, a relative level and an absolute level.^[3] Based on their understanding of the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, the Chinese Buddhist monks and philosophers supposed that the teaching of the Buddha-nature was, as stated by that sutra, the final Buddhist teaching, and that there is an essential truth above emptiness (śūnyatā) and the two truths.^[4] The doctrine of emptiness (śūnyatā) is an attempt to show that it is neither proper nor strictly justifiable to regard any metaphysical system as absolutely valid. It doesn't lead to nihilism but strikes a middle course (madhyamāpratipada) between excessive naïveté and excessive skepticism.^[1]