[Buddha-l] Acting on emptiness

[Richard Hayes]

On Tue, 2008-10-21 at 11:52 +0200, Erik Hoogcarspel wrote: 
 
> I have a hard time understanding the statement 'conventional truth
> just is ultimate truth'.

I think the claim is that whatever is ultimately true is also
conventionally true, and whatever is ultimately false is also
conventionally false 

> Are CT and UT synonimous?

I don't think that is quite what is meant. As far as I can understand
the claim under discussion, it is simply that truth is truth and
falsehood is falsehood. What distinguishes conventional from ultimate is
not the content of the claims deemed true or false, but the attitude
with which truth is recognized. If the truth is appreciated by a mind
still under the sway of desire and aversion, the the truth is grasped
conventionally. If the same truth is appreciated without any clinging,
then it is grasped and let go.

> Well in that case read Quine's Empiricism without dogma's and you'll
> see that this is problematic.

Are you thinking of "The Two Dogmas of Empiricism"?

> The question of how to tell if a person grasps the ultimate truth
> seems to me ot have two sides. At one side it seems to boil down to
> the question 'what does it feel like to be enlightened?' At the other
> side you could say that if one can tell if a person grasps UT by her
> actions then it is possible to identify these actions or kind of
> actions, so a pragmatist would say that grasping UT is acting in the
> way of A. This seems at odds with what Nāgārjuna has to say.

I am not entirely sure what Candrakirti was getting at when he said that
ultimate truth is manifested in how one acts rather than in what one
says. Which passages in Nāgārjuna seem to you at odds with such a claim?

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico