Are There Two Levels of Truth and Reality?

The paper challenges the widely held view that the Buddha used in his discourses two kinds of language, one expressing ‘conventional truth’ and the other ‘ultimate’ or ‘absolute truth.’ It traces this view to the Theravada commentaries and points out how its advocates are trying to impute it on the Buddha’s discourses by ‘implication,’ thereby creating the impression that they contain ontological statements, while he on several occasions expressly refused to be drawn into philosophical discourse, always instead pointing out the way to liberation. Later developments of the notion of two truths and realities in Mahayana in India and Tibet are discussed, including Nagarjuna’s and Tso n-ka-pa’s, and it is noted that the question posed by the title of this paper has not yet been decided one way or another by academic scholarship.