Class: Buddhist Path | Latest Meditation Posts
Understanding the Buddhist Two Reality Doctrine
Is there a distinction between how woke up beings and abnormal beings understand the world? In keeping with the Buddha’s teachings there may be certainly, and the teachings on the 2 truths or two realities can assist us perceive what the distinction is.
What we name relative fact is the supposed “actuality” that we expertise—you sit there, I sit right here, and everybody else is sitting wherever they’re proper now. What we expertise appears so actual that we naturally assume that what we understand, imagine, and really feel is the reality. It usually surprises us that others don’t share our actuality. In a relationship, as an illustration, we’re satisfied that our notion of occasions is true and actual, and our companion would possibly insist that theirs is. It really works this fashion with all people and every little thing!
We additionally name this standard or provisional fact. However our “fact” is so private that it isn’t shared by anybody else on the planet. And it isn’t dependable or secure as a result of it’s continuously altering in line with our circumstances. We could understand the identical individual in another way relying on our temper and outer circumstances: an enemy can turn into a pal and a pal can turn into an enemy.
What we name “relative” is that this world of conditioned notion—conditioned not solely by interior components, similar to our feelings, but additionally by components just like the climate, political conditions, different folks’s emotions, and so forth. This conditioned world perceived by my conditioned mindstream results in my private conviction that that is how issues really are.
If I look extra carefully, nonetheless, I notice that what I’m perceiving is a “self-made” actuality; “self-made” is a translation of a Tibetan time period which suggests contrived or synthetic. But self-made actuality is the one actuality I can depend on proper now. For essentially the most half, my understanding of how causes, situations, and outcomes perform makes it doable for me to have the ability to adapt to and function on this world adequately.
However in line with the doctrine of the 2 truths, there’s one other dimension of actuality as taught by the Buddha and described by numerous kindhearted academics since the Buddha’s time. That is the dimension that accords with the experiences of those that are absolutely woke up. A hanging distinction between their notion of the world and occasions and ours is that in theirs, the sense of self has disappeared. We describe this consciousness that’s free from dualistic, subjective notion as final actuality or fact.
When the thoughts is freed from self-concern and the topic, the “I,” is not the middle of a person’s expertise, there may be an acute sensitivity to every little thing that arises. This expresses itself as a panoramic capacity to understand issues and occasions by means of a spectrum of various lenses and ranges, as a result of the positioning of self-centeredness and the seeming separation from others in a seemingly outer world are gone.
Within the thoughts of an woke up individual, all the standard labeling—this can be a digital camera, that’s a pc, this can be a man, that could be a girl, that is me, that’s you—is known to be subjective and provisional. I see this as a tree, however how does an ant understand it? She considers it her house: an ant’s notion of the world differs from mine. All of the phrases we use, all of the ideas we depend on are relative; their “actuality” is provisional, slightly than definitive, as a result of we understand and interpret them in line with our subjective perspective.
As abnormal beings, we depend on observe and instinct to present us a glimpse of a non-separated, non-dual expertise of the world the place all assumptions based mostly on topic and object have dissolved and all feelings that cloud the thoughts are gone. The woke up ones use subject-object language to specific this state, all of the whereas figuring out that no matter must be expressed is past phrases. For them, standard communication is like speaking in regards to the solar behind the clouds. They know that even with out seeing the solar, listeners can think about it behind the clouds and expertise it to a sure diploma.
As unenlightened beings, we take heed to the teachings and observe the trail of awakening from inside relative, provisional actuality. We settle for that the teachings use dualistic ideas and strategies. We use our dualistic minds to step by step and elegantly work our means right into a extra open consciousness of what’s. At any time when doable, we drop the pointless labeling and self-cherishing, we drop the recurring subjectivity and enter more and more open states of thoughts. We calm down the hassle to carry onto what we often understand as actuality and easily depart or not it’s.
From inside that deep, open, non-artificial leisure, the pure receptivity of the open thoughts produces spontaneous actions of interplay with the world. Woke up exercise arises from inside that woke up perspective. As a result of there isn’t a sense of clinging or greedy, it’s as if every little thing unfolds naturally, with out an instrument or a plan.
The character of thoughts is such that there’s all the time the potential to expertise the world subjectively or objectively, comparatively or finally. The 2 truths co-exist. In our moments of notion, nonetheless, the relative and supreme don’t coincide. As practitioners, we’re both functioning inside the dualistic framework of topic and object, or the thoughts has opened into non-dual consciousness. And since the potential of experiencing final actuality is all the time proper there, we needn’t struggle with provisional actuality as we proceed alongside the trail. As our observe deepens, we perceive that we are able to make use of the relative to enter the last word: the notion of the woke up ones.
Lhundrup speaks a number of languages, interprets from Tibetan, and has traveled and taught extensively all through Europe and in Brazil. He’s within the interface between Buddhist contemplative practices and psychotherapy, and enjoys writing about modern approaches to historic Buddhist practices. Be taught extra about Tilmann Lhundrup right here.