The Significance of Pratītyasamutpāda for Understanding the Relationship between Saṁvṛti and Paramārthasatya in Nāgārjuna

Abstract

The relationship between saṁvṛti and paramārtha in Mādhyamika thought has often been conceived as an epistemological dualism: saṁvṛti is regarded as phenomenal illusion, and paramārtha is an undivided mystical union with the One eternal absolute.2 For instance, Edward Conze, in the section on Mādhyamika in Buddhist Thought in India, speaks of a substratum at the base of all phenomenal reality which is the Mādhyamika “vision of the One.”3 Again, he says that the spiritual intention of the term “emptiness” is “to reveal the Infinite by removing that which obscures it.”4 This way of understanding the relationship between the phenomenal world and the highest awareness of truth (reality) may be suggested in the expressions of some of Nāgārjuna’s followers, especially the Prāsangika school; but I cannot find this kind of differentiation in the Mūlamadyamakakārikās or Vigrahavyāvartanī, and it may be helpful for the discussion of Madhyamika philosophy to analyze the notion of ‘the two satyas’ in relation to pratītyasamutpāda as found in these texts.