The Theory of Two Truths in Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka Philosophy

Dr Sonam Thakchoe (University of Tasmania)

The Prāsaṅgika’s theory of the two truths, laid out primarily in the works of the Indian philosopher Candrakīrti (ca. 600-650), is where we find the philosophical culmination of the trend toward non-foundationalism observed in the other schools of Buddhist thought. In the Buddhist foundationalist schools, we observe what was considered foundational progressively shrink, observe intrinsic nature confined by turns to smaller spatio-temporal units, to unique particulars, to the mind itself, and to the conventional domain. In the Prāsaṅgika account of the two truths, intrinsic nature is elimated entirely. Both conventional and ultimate truths are empty of it. Intrinsic nature does not exist, anywhere, because it cannot. Things which exist intrinsically exist independently, and such things have no place in a world which is utterly interdependent, utterly causal. The conventional truth is the fact of things so arising; the ultimate truth is the absence of that – intrinsic reality – which would prevent it from so doing.  In the Prāsaṅgika account, the conventional and ultimate, dependent causation and emptiness, are especially closely linked, twin aspects of a single reality. This is especially important to countering the charge most frequently levelled against the Prāsaṅgika, that they extend beyond non-foundationalism into the outright nihilism. It demonstrates that the Prāsaṅgika accept the existence of things, and challenge only the mode that things exist. Things exist, they say, because they dependently arise, and they do so precisely because they are entirely empty of intrinsic nature.

Dr Sonam Thakchoe is a former Tibetan monk trained in Tibetan Buddhist tradition for fifteen years. He obtained his PhD (2002) from the University of Tasmania, Shastri (BA, 1995) and Acharya (MA, 1997) with double majors on the history of Indo-Tibetan philosophy and religious studies from Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, Sarnath, India. He has taught Buddhist philosophy at the University of Tasmania for the past eight years and is now a full-time lecturer in Asian and comparative philosophy. He is the author of The Two Truths Debate: Tsongkhapa and Gorampa on the Middle Way (Wisdom Publications).