The Inner Science of Buddhist Practice - Khamkoo

Mahāyāna Practice ◀ 203
would not be possible to teach the ultimate. And if [the ultimate]
is not explained, it cannot be understood. Without having understood
the ultimate, it is not possible to achieve nirvana. 794
Candrakīrti seems to agree with the suggestion that everything other
than ultimate truth is to be abandoned in some sense. I interpret this as
an acknowledgment that everything that constitutes conventional truth is
false because, while it appears to exist independently to a dualistic mind,
proper analysis reveals this to be an illusion. Nāgārjuna alludes to this point
in his Sixty Verses of Reasoning:
Since the Buddhas declared
That nirvana is the sole truth,
What wise person would surmise
That all else is not false? 795
How, then, are we to understand the manner in which Candrakīrti
“accepts” conventional entities? In the context of rejecting the Mind Only
School’s view that causally dependent entities have a real essence, he makes
the following observations in his Commentary to the Introduction to the
Middle Way:
Of your own accord and appealing [only] to your philosophical system,
you assert [the existence of ] a dependent essence that an Ārya
perceives with his [or her transcendent] wisdom; but we do not
explain the conventional in that manner.
What then?
Though [conventional truth] does not exist [in reality], [its
existence] is accepted by the ordinary world. Therefore, we assert
only a mode of being that is held to exist by the ordinary world; for
to express oneself in that manner is the means by which it can be
refuted. As the Lord [Buddha] declared, “The world quarrels with
me. I do not quarrel with the world. Whatever the world believes
to exist, I too believe to exist. Whatever the world does not believe
to exist, I too do not believe to exist.”
. . . Therefore, we accept the conventional [only] insofar as it is
something that is dependent upon others, not in any independent
sense. 796