Two truths? Again

Zen talk March 2026

It continues to cause confusion. In the Pali Canon, it is still about two untruths: “everything exists” and “nothing exists” (SN 12.15). In the Chinese translation, the terms “existence” and “non-existence” are rendered as 有 (yǒu) and 無 (wú), two terms that are also central to the Laozi. In Nagarjuna, they become two truths, samvrti and paramartha, the conventional and the ultimate. In the Heart Sutra, they become form and emptiness. In the Cantong qi, we sometimes translate them as multiplicity and unity. In Huayan and Zen, they become 事 (shi) and 理 (li). Under the influence of Western philosophy, these last two are translated as relative and absolute reality. Jay Garfield brings in a difficult Greek term: ‘dialetheia,’ whereby two contradictory propositions can both be true. Stephen Batchelor rejects the two-truths model entirely, partly because it is misused as a rationale to justify the authority of teachers who claim to have personally attained insight into the nature of ultimate truth.

In short, it’s a mess.

But perhaps it is much simpler than that, if we can set aside a few cultural assumptions for a moment.

What does the world look like through the eyes of the other? You’ll never know. You can only see the other through your own eyes. But you can broaden your perspective by listening to the other. If you’re willing to do that, you’ll get to know not only the other but also yourself. Through that contrast, your own assumptions also become visible. This opens up a whole new world.

For me, the encounter with Buddhism has certainly opened up a new world. It is a continuous process of learning. One of the things I have come to realize is how much we in the West are obsessed with the question “what does really exist?” I mean “exist” as in: “Santa Claus doesn’t exist. But God does.” And since God really exists, he exists just as much for the atheist, but the atheist is erring.

But if you walk down a shopping street in December, don’t you see Santa Claus all over the place? There’s a lovely old expression for this: “the years of discretion”. The age at which a child can see the difference between reality and fantasy.

Of course, we can only know reality through how we experience it. But we make a clear distinction between our experience and reality itself. The trick is not to let ourselves be deceived by our subjective experience, but to look beyond it to discover what objectively does exist. It seems too obvious for words. This isn’t philosophy. It’s how we think spontaneously.

If we want to understand the Buddhist model of two truths, or two realities, we must let go of this idea of existence. Eastern texts do not make the strict distinction between subjective experience and objective reality. But that distinction is so fundamental to us that we do not even have a language for an alternative.

Take, for example, a sentence like: everything is an illusion. Does that mean that the entire reality in which we live is illusory? That would be complete nonsense, though perhaps it is unfathomably profound. Or does it simply mean that we have a tendency to create illusions about everything? But even in this last sentence, we spontaneously hear a distinction between an objective “everything” and a subjective “illusion”. If we leave that distinction behind, there is only the experienced reality.

How we experience reality is partly determined by how we deal with it. That is what this is all about. And there are two very different ways of dealing with that experienced reality. The first is to view everything we experience as that which is happening in this moment. There is only one moment in which we live, and that is now. There is only one moment in which we can look, and that is now. There is only one moment in which we can act, and that is now. Everything else is a narrative.

That is what we do in meditation. We set aside the narrative and observe what is presenting itself now. We exclude nothing and we do not pick and choose. That is what the Xinxinming means by “It is a vast open space in which nothing is lacking, nothing is superfluous.”

The second way is to radically enter the narrative. Then we experience a world of cause and effect, of success and failure, of pleasure and pain. That is the world into which we are born and in which we die.

What is a wholesome way to deal with this narrative? This brings us to a second aspect of “the years of discretion”: the distinction between good and evil. In a theistic context, this is the law that emanates from God. The conscience that develops during “the years of discretion” is then God’s voice, deep within us. In an atheistic context, it is the voice of reason upon which ethics is based.

In Buddhism, it is not about what is allowed and what is not, but rather the question is asked: how do we cause suffering and well-being? And the simple answer is that we cause suffering from the illusion that we will become happy by satisfying our needs. This, however, has been contradicted throughout our entire lives. Satisfying our needs, however important for our survival, is always temporary and never makes us truly happy. There is always another need, straight away. It is endless.

But, says the Buddha, there is another meaning of the word happiness, one that stems from the intention with which we live. When we are not driven purely by the satisfaction of needs, but by what in Buddhism is called the four brahmaviharas: loving-kindness, compassion, appreciation, and equanimity. This intention is timeless and independent of the result.

And that brings us back to meditation. For a moment, we step out of the world of winning and losing. There, we can let go of the tension of success and failure. That is the place where our compassion wells up again. And from there, we step back into the narrative.