The two truths

The doctrine of two truths distinguishes conventional truth (saṃvṛti-satya), the truth of everyday experience and language, of persons, chariots and causes, from ultimate truth (paramārtha-satya), the way things finally are. Several Buddhist schools use the distinction, but it is central to Madhyamaka. Nāgārjuna writes that the Buddha’s teaching rests on the two truths, that the ultimate cannot be taught without relying on the conventional, and that without the ultimate, nirvāṇa is not reached.

In Madhyamaka, the ultimate truth is emptiness: the absence of intrinsic existence in everything, including emptiness itself. The conventional is not simply false; it is how dependently arisen things appear and function. Later Madhyamikas debated whether the two truths are different, identical, or neither, and how the conventional can be valid if it is not ultimately real.

Readers have compared the Buddhist doctrine with the Advaita distinction between practical and ultimate reality. The structures are similar, but the content differs: for Advaita, the ultimate is Brahman, a real ground; for Madhyamaka, it is the emptiness of any such ground.