Origins of the "double-truth"

[Stephen Hodge]

Steve Farmer wrote:

 > Religious and
> philosophical exegetes world-wide recognized (in most cases, if
> not all, independently) that if conflicting concepts showed up in
> two authoritative texts or traditions, as a last resort the two
> sides could be reconciled by distinguishing different "levels" of
> reality and redistributing the conflicting concepts to those
> respective levels.
 But the Buddhist concept of the two truths, certainly in its earlier
forms, does not concern "reality" but rather modes of perception /
conception and only very tangentially "reality".  To me it seems
intrinsically different from the kind of "two truths" models you
allude to.  Generally speaking, the Mahayana strategy for dealing with
contradictions is dealt, rather with the terms "neyaartha"
(provisional "truth") and niitaartha (definitive "truth").  Buddhists,
on the whole are more concerned with epistemology that ontology
although that did not stop some schools from dabbling in ontology and
were severely criticized for such. I don't know too much about
Vedaanta, but if it ontologizes the "two truths" then it is talking
about something different to most early and Mahayana Buddhists.

David Eckel's "J~naanagarbha's Commnetary on the Distinction between
the Two Truths (SUNY 1987) is a useful study of a late Mahayana
understanding of the two truths.

> You can find uses of the double-truth for similar reconciliative
> purposes in the Three-Treatise (San-lun) School of Chinese
> Buddhism
FYI:  Much of Chinese Buddhist interpretation can be seen as aberrant
from an mainstream Indian Mahayana Buddhist perspective.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge