[Buddha-l] Acting on emptiness

[Dan Lusthaus]

Richard wrote:

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

This is the problem with limiting the "truths" to only two. Paramartha
becomes a "truth" for which truth-claims, evidence, philosophical
verification, etc., are irrelevant (by definition), while everything else -- 
whether true or false -- falls into the domain of samvrti, making it a very
overcrowded and self-conflicted domain. That's why the Yogacaras introduce
the tri-(ni.h-)svabhaava model. Parini.spanna is a methodology for
eliminating parikalpita from paratantra. Falsity simplicitur (such as
assuming selfhood for things) is parikalpita. Paratantra is
pratitya-samutpada -- it can be infiltrated by parikalpita, or, if purified
via parini.spanna, "pure paratantra." The latter paratantra is "true" while
one can formulate truths about the former paratantra (e.g., diagnosing how
it falsifies).

Additionally, the Yogacaras -- drawing on and refining abhidharma
developments -- differentiate between praj~napti (conceptual-linguistic
statements that gloss, and thus distort, the truth that underlies them) and
dravya (real components of a causal process; *not* substance). Parikalpa is
pernicious prajnapti. Paratantra encompasses prajnapti (which is false to
the extent it is mistaken for dravya) and dravya, actual causal components.

In more practical terms, what this amounts to is a threefold, rather than
twofold scale. What is utterly false (e.g., chimeras like round-squares and
the teeth of a crow); what is true or false as determined by conventional
criteria (e.g., mathematical claims, whether or not Richard is an
eel-wriggler, etc.), and what is utterly true (differently described; the
Yogacaras developed apoha theory to try to give paramartha a voice). So,
e.g., empirical or scientifc truths (not necessarily the same) are samvrti,
but no less "true" or insignificant because of that. Getting one's samvrti
truths right is crucial, from the Yogacara vantage point (which is why,
e.g., Dignaga and Dharmakirti work so hard to get anumana right, despite its
being kalpanaa). And why Asanga relies so heavily on medical theory to
analyze the mind-body relation.

> 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.

I don't know where Candrakirti was supposed to have said that. Do you have a
reference, citation?

What he does say (Sprung's tr. p. 180; cf. Vallee Poussin, p. 369;
AAtman-parik.sa chap.):

"There is no identity of insight or of explanation between the Maadhyamikas
who have fully realized the real nature of things as it is (vastusvaruupa)
and who expound that, and the nihilists who have not fully realized the real
nature of things as they are, even though there is no difference in their
theory of the nature of things."

This has to do with insight and verbalization, not translation of ideas or
beliefs into action.

Candrakirti's views (which are ultimately threefold, like Yogacara), along
with Bhavaviveka's 2-truth theory (or the Lindtner-Harris version; David
Eckel thinks this represents commentators' mapping of Bhavaviveka, not
Bhavaviveka himself), and a contrast between Candrakirti and Yogacara
(Xuanzang in particular), is the subject of ch. 17 of my _Buddhist
Phenomenology_.

Dan Lusthaus