The Two Truths Doctrine: Conventional and Ultimate Reality

Nagarjuna formalizes the doctrine of the two truths (satyadvaya) most explicitly in MMK Chapter 24, verse 8, stating that the Buddha's teaching of the dharma relies on exactly two truths: conventional, or worldly, truth (samvrtisatya, sometimes rendered "concealing truth") and ultimate truth (paramarthasatya). Those who fail to distinguish these two truths correctly, Nagarjuna warns in the following verse (24:9), fail to grasp the profound truth contained in the Buddha's teaching altogether — making the two truths doctrine not a peripheral clarification but the essential interpretive key to the entire Madhyamaka system and to how emptiness relates to ordinary experience.