Keep both truths when you decide something

Act fully within ordinary reality — deadlines, promises, money — while holding lightly that none of it has a fixed essence.

Pourquoi ça marche

In MMK 24:8–10 Nāgārjuna says the Buddha’s teaching rests on two truths, one of worldly convention and one ultimate; that without understanding the distinction the teaching is not understood; and that without a foundation in the conventional, the ultimate cannot be taught. Garfield glosses the conventional truth as genuinely true on everyday terms — there really are tables and chairs in the room — while ultimately those same things lack inherent existence. Holding both blocks two errors in a decision: treating the stakes as fixed and final, and waving away real consequences because “it’s all empty.”

Comment faire

1. When you face a real decision, write it down in ordinary terms: the options, the costs, who is affected, what you have promised.
2. Decide on those terms. The conventional truth is where consequences happen.
3. Then ask: what am I treating as fixed and final here — a reputation, a role, one outcome that would define me?
4. Hold that part more lightly: it depends on causes and on how it is named, and it will change.
5. Notice whether the decision itself changes, or only the grip with which you hold it.

Données probantes

The two-truths verses are MMK 24:8–10, translated in Garfield’s 1994 essay, which describes the two truths as two characterisations of the same phenomena rather than two realms. Williams’s survey of Mādhyamika covers how later Indian and Tibetan schools developed the doctrine. Using it as a decision aid is an application, supported by the texts’ logic rather than by any study. (anecdotal)

The texts do not prescribe this exercise. Madhyamaka schools disagreed about exactly how the two truths relate — Garfield notes that the split between the Svātantrika and Prāsaṅgika schools reflects, among other things, different readings of Nāgārjuna.

Sources

• Garfield, J. L. (1994). Dependent arising and the emptiness of emptiness: Why did Nāgārjuna start with causation? Philosophy East and West, 44(2), 219–250 (includes a translation of Mūlamadhyamakakārikā chapters 1, 2 and 24).
• Williams, P. (2008). Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations (2nd ed.), chapters “The Perfection of Wisdom (Prajñāpāramitā) Sūtras,” pp. 57–74, and “Mādhyamika,” pp. 75–95. London: Routledge.
• Garfield, J. L. (2015). Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy, chapter “The Metaphysical Perspective II: Emptiness,” pp. 56–90. New York: Oxford University Press.

Erreur fréquente

Using the ultimate truth to skip the conventional one — “it’s all empty anyway” as a reason not to pay the bill or keep the promise. Nāgārjuna’s own claim is that the ultimate cannot even be taught without the conventional.