Editing Two truths doctrine (section)

==Understanding in other traditions==
{{Main|Spread of Buddhism}}
{{Further|Buddhism and other religions|Six Heretical Teachers}}

===Jainism===
{{Main|Anekāntavāda}}
{{Further|Jain philosophy}}

The 2nd-century [[Digambara]] [[Jain monasticism|Jain monk]] and philosopher [[Kundakunda]] distinguishes between two perspectives of truth:

*''Vyāvahāranaya'' or "mundane perspective".
*''Niścayanaya'' or "ultimate perspective", also called "supreme" (''pāramārtha'') and "pure" (''śuddha'').<ref>Long, Jeffery; Jainism: An Introduction, page 126.</ref>

For Kundakunda, the mundane realm of truth is also the relative perspective of normal folk, where the workings of ''[[karma]]'' operate and where things emerge, last for a certain time, and then perish. The ultimate perspective, meanwhile, is that of the liberated [[Jiva|individual soul]] (''jīvatman''), which is "blissful, energetic, perceptive, and omniscient".<ref>Long, Jeffery; Jainism: An Introduction, page 126.</ref>

===Advaita Vedānta===
{{Main|Advaita Vedanta}}
{{Further|Ajātivāda|Buddhist influences on Advaita Vedanta}}

The [[Advaita Vedanta|Advaita]] school of [[Vedanta|Vedānta philosophy]] took over from the Buddhist [[Madhyamaka|Mādhyamaka]] school the idea of levels of reality.{{sfn|Renard|2004|p=130}} Usually two levels are being mentioned,{{sfn|Renard|2004|p=131}} but the school's founder [[Adi Shankara|Ādi Śaṅkara]] uses [[Advaita vedanta#Criterion of Sublation|sublation as the criterion]] to postulate an ontological hierarchy of three levels:{{sfn|Puligandla|1997|p=232}}<ref group=web name=Discrimination>[http://www.advaita-vision.org/discrimination/ advaita-vision.org, ''Discrimination'']</ref>{{refn|group=note|According to Chattopadhyaya, the Advaitins retain the term ''pāramārtha-satya'' or ''pāramārthika-satya'' for the ultimate truth, and for the ''loka saṃvṛti'' of the Mādhyamikas they use the term ''vyāvahārika satya'' and for ''aloka saṃvṛti'' they use the term ''prāthibhāsika'':<ref>{{cite book |title=''What is Living and What is Dead in Indian Philosophy'' 5th edition |author=Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya |pages=107, 104 |year=2001}}</ref>}}

* {{IAST|Pāramārthika}}: the absolute level, "which is absolutely real and into which both other reality levels can be resolved".<ref group=web name=Discrimination /> This experience can't be sublated by any other experience.{{sfn|Puligandla|1997|p=232}}
* {{IAST|Vyāvahārika}} (or ''saṃvṛti-satya'',{{sfn|Renard|2004|p=131}} empirical or pragmatical): "our world of experience, the phenomenal world that we handle every day when we are awake".<ref group=web name=Discrimination /> It is the level in which both ''[[Jiva|jīva]]'' (living creatures or individual souls) and ''[[Ishvara|Īśvara]]'' (Supreme Being) are true; here, the material world is also true.
* {{IAST|Prāthibhāsika}} (apparent reality or unreality): "reality based on imagination alone".<ref group=web name=Discrimination /> It is the level in which appearances are actually false, like the illusion of a snake over a rope, or a dream.

===Mīmāṃsā===
{{Main|Hindu philosophy}}
{{Further|Buddhism and Hinduism}}

Chattopadhyaya notes that the 8th-century [[Mīmāṃsā]] philosopher [[Kumārila Bhaṭṭa]] rejected the two truths doctrine in his ''Shlokavartika''.<ref name="Bhaṭṭa"/> Bhaṭṭa was highly influential with his defence of [[Brahmanism|Vedic orthodoxy and rituals]] against the [[Śramaṇa|Buddhist rejection of Brahmanical beliefs and ritualism]].<ref name="Siderits 2015"/> Some believe that his influence contributed to the [[decline of Buddhism in India]],{{sfn|Sheridan|1995|p=198-201}} since his lifetime coincides with the period in which Buddhism began to disappear from the Indian subcontinent.{{sfn|Sharma|1980|p=5-6}}

According to Kumārila, the two truths doctrine fundamentally is an [[Buddhist idealism|idealist doctrine]], which conceals the fact that "the theory of the nothingness of the objective world" is absurd: {{quote|[O]ne should admit that what does not exist, exists not; and what does exist, exists in the full sense. The latter alone is true, and the former false. But the idealist just cannot afford to do this. He is obliged instead to talk of 'two truths', senseless though this be.<ref name="Bhaṭṭa"/><!--START OF NOTE-->{{refn|group=note|Kumārila Bhaṭṭa: "The idealist talks of some 'apparent truth' or 'provisional truth of practical life', i.e. in his terminology, of ''samvriti satya''. However, since in his own view, there is really no truth in this 'apparent truth', what is the sense of asking us to look at it as some special brand of truth as it were? If there is truth in it, why call it false at all? And, if it is really false, why call it a kind of truth?

Truth and falsehood, being mutually exclusive, there cannot be any factor called 'truth' as belonging in common to both--no more than there can by any common factor called 'treeness' belonging to both the tree and the lion, which are mutually exclusive.

On the idealist's own assumption, this 'apparent truth' is nothing but a synonym for the 'false'. Why, then, does he use this expression? Because it serves for him a very important purpose. It is the purpose of a verbal hoax. It means falsity, though with such a pedantic air about it as to suggest something apparently different, as it were. This is in fact a well known trick. Thus, to create a pedantic air, one can use the word ''vaktrasava'' [literally mouth-wine] instead of the simpler word ''lala'', meaning saliva [''vancanartha upanyaso lala-vaktrasavadivat''].

But why is this pedantic air? Why, instead of simply talking of falsity, is the verbal hoax of an 'apparent truth' or samvriti? The purpose of conceiving this samvriti is only to conceal the absurdity of the theory of the nothingness of the objective world, so that it can somehow be explained why things are imagined as actually existing when they are not so.

Instead of playing such verbal tricks, therefore, one should speak honestly. This means: one should admit that what does not exist, exists not; and what does exist, exists in the full sense. The latter alone is true, and the former false. But the idealist just cannot afford to do this. He is obliged instead to talk of 'two truths', senseless though this be."<ref name="Bhaṭṭa">{{cite book |title=''What is Living and What is Dead in Indian Philosophy'' 5th edition |author=Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya |pages=370–1 |year=2001}}</ref>}}<!--END OF NOTE-->}}

===Correspondence with Pyrrhonism===
{{Main|Ancient Greek philosophy}}
{{Further|Similarities between Pyrrhonism and Buddhism}}
{{Pyrrhonism sidebar}}

[[Thomas McEvilley]] notes a correspondence between Greek [[Pyrrhonism]] and the Buddhist [[Madhyamaka|Mādhyamaka]] school: {{quote|Sextus says <ref>Sextus Empericus, ''Outlines of Pyrrhonism'', II.14–18; ''Anthologia Palatina'' (Palatine Anthology), VII. 29–35, and elsewhere</ref> that there are two criteria:
# [T]hat by which we judge reality and unreality, and
# [T]hat which we use as a guide in everyday life.
According to the first criterion, nothing is either true or false[.] [I]nductive statements based on direct observation of phenomena may be treated as either true or false for the purpose of making everyday practical decisions.<br/>
The distinction, as Conze<ref>Conze 1959, pp. 140–141)</ref> has noted, is equivalent to the Madhyamaka distinction between "Absolute truth" (''paramārthasatya''), "the knowledge of the real as it is without any distortion,"<ref name="Conze 1959: p. 244">Conze (1959: p. 244)</ref> and "Truth so-called" (''saṃvṛti satya''), "truth as conventionally believed in common parlance.<ref name="Conze 1959: p. 244"/><ref>{{cite book |first=Thomas |last=McEvilley |title=The Shape of Ancient Thought |publisher=Allworth Communications |year=2002 |isbn=1-58115-203-5}}, p. 474</ref>}}

Thus in Pyrrhonism "absolute truth" corresponds to [[acatalepsy]] and "conventional truth" to [[phantasiai]].