4. THE ESSENTIAL BASE: AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE TWO TRUTHS

理解二实话

THE ESSENTIAL BASE:

AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE TWO TRUTHS

Do you remember the story of King Midas?

“Midas, king of Lydia, swelled at first with pride when he found he could transform everything he touched to gold; but when he beheld his food grow rigid and his drink harden into golden ice then he understood that this gift was a bane and in his loathing for gold, cursed his prayer”.

Now imagine that you (and everybody else, except those who have awakened) have a similar type of condition –only in your case you don’t change things “out there” into gold by touching them… You change the illusions inside your own mind into delusions by giving them Name and Form and believing them to be real. These delusions may not seem as life-threatening as King Midas’ gift, but they are the root of suffering and all the ills that follow.

Now, the important thing to bear in mind is that, regardless of what happens inside your head, what’s “out there” does not change in response to your thoughts. It continues to be the same empty, unitary and impermanent stuff (we can call it energy, if you wish), no matter whether you take it be an illusion or, on the contrary, believe that it is substantial, separate and enduring.

The problem with any teaching is that, by using Name and Form to explain how things work, we run the risk of “contaminating” them with the delusion of separate existence that is often attached to names and forms. But, once again, this “contamination” only takes place inside our minds, not “out there”, in the samsaric world, which remains basically unaffected.

How did the Buddha (and Nagarjuna too) get around this dilemma, which is a common stumbling block in the spiritual path? By using an expression such as “neither existence nor non-existence”. They recognized two levels of truth (i.e., two levels of human experience): the provisional and the ultimate. However, this does not mean at all that they recognized two levels of reality or existence. There is no such thing as a conventional existence on the one hand and an ultimate existence on the other; there is only something which can be called “neither existence nor non-existence”. In fact, even calling it “something” may be too much, but if we don’t use words communication breaks down, so we have to make do with the least possible cognition and verbalization.

Be careful not to confuse the two truths (merely a tool to help you understand what’s going on inside your own mind) with two separate realities. If you do so, you are falling inadvertently into the trap of duality by exporting the delusions in your mind and projecting them onto the world “out there”.

Remember: there is just “what is”, call it what you may, but the human mind can either experience it as a natural and correct illusion (samsara) or else as a contaminated delusion (stained samsara). The choice is ours.

Everything is an illusion, even the mind that apparently perceives the illusion, and the closest we can come to experiencing its true nature, so to speak, is through awakening –which, if you remember the teachings, occurs subliminally in the right hemisphere and then is likewise contaminated as soon as it becomes an object of consciousness in the left.

So, once again, do not attach an artificial reality to the verbal explanations that I use only to help you better understand the nature of the illusions of samsara, which are natural and correct. There is no escaping illusion as long as we live in this human mind-body, with its limited sensory apparatus; but we can experience this illusion as correct and natural, promoting life in harmony and balance, or else as stained and crooked, harming the natural Life Force inside oneself and within all other living beings.

Please take great care to understand; it’s no trifling matter. It’s all an illusion, sure, but it can be a magnificently grand illusion in unison with all apparently living beings in the universe. The choice is in your hands… and in your mind.

Nāgārjuna (c. 150 – 250 C.E.) was arguably the most influential Indian Buddhist thinker after Gautama Buddha and founded the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) school of Mahāyāna (Great Vehicle) Buddhism. He is credited with writing the most eloquent expositions of śūnyatāvada (the doctrine of emptiness), was the first to propose the two-truths doctrine, and was an abbot of the famous Buddhist university, Nalanda. Nagarjuna's writings had a major influence not only on the development of Mahayana Buddhist thought, but also in triggering Hindu responses to Buddhism (particularly evidenced in Advaita). Furthermore, Nagarjuna's ideas spawned the Three Treatise (Sanlun) School in China