The Dual Significance of Ultimate Truth

Truth encompasses two levels of meaning. The first refers to phenomena and principles recognized by worldly people as temporarily unchanging, perceivable through sight, sound, touch, or imagination—things that can be cognized. The second refers to transcendental principles unknown and unseen by worldly people.

The first kind of reality includes the material universe, which sentient beings perceive as tangible, knowable, unchanging, and possessing genuine utility, thus deemed real. It includes the body composed of the five aggregates, which is visible, tangible, and contactable, possessing apparent functions and perceived as knowable and unchanging. It also includes the six dust realms, which are contactable, cognizable by the six consciousnesses, and considered to have genuine utility. However, in actual principle, these dharmas are not truly real; they are illusory manifestations without genuine utility—virtual dharmas. All that is known through them is delusion. Sentient beings, since beginningless kalpas, have lived within this illusion, unaware of true principles. Even if these dharmas possess temporary, false utility, they are still subject to instantaneous arising and ceasing, impermanence, and change, rendering them equally unreal. The wisdom of sentient beings can only reach the surface of phenomena, never penetrating the depths; it cannot perceive the truth behind appearances.

The second kind of reality refers solely to the fundamental source of sentient beings—the Tathagatagarbha, the eighth consciousness, which gives birth to all dharmas necessary for sentient beings. This alone is the truly real, unchanging noumenon—the eternal, indestructible dharma—the genuine refuge for sentient beings throughout beginningless kalpas. These two realities are vastly different; they cannot be compared, nor is there any basis for comparison.