[MD] Conventional truth

[MarshaV]

"Among the many similes for conventional truth that litter Madhyamaka texts, the most fruitful is that of the mirage. Conventional truth is false, Candrakirti tells us, because it is deceptive.  Candrakirti spells this out in terms of a mirage. A mirage appears to be water, but is in fact empty of water—it is deceptive, and in that sense, a false appearance. On the other hand, a mirage is not nothing: it is a real mirage, just not real water. 

"The analogy must be spelled out with care to avoid the extreme of nihilism. A mirage appears to be water, but is only a mirage; the inexperienced highway traveler mistakes it for water, and for him it is deceptive, a false appearance of water; the experienced traveler sees it for what it is—a real mirage, empty of water. Just so, conventional phenomena appear to ordinary, deluded beings to be inherently existent, whereas in fact they are merely conventionally real, empty of that inherent existence; to the åryas, on the other hand, they appear to be merely conventionally true, hence to be empty. For us, they are deceptive, false appearances; for them, they are simply real conventional truths. 

"We can update the analogy to make the point more plainly. Imagine three travelers along a hot desert highway. Alice is an experienced desert traveler; Bill is a neophyte; Charlie is wearing polarizing sunglasses. Bill points to a mirage up ahead and warns against a puddle on the road; Alice sees the mirage as a mirage and assures him that there is no danger. Charlie sees nothing at all, and wonders what they are talking about. If the mirage were entirely false—if there were no truth about it at all, Charlie would be the most authoritative of the three (and Buddhas would know nothing of the real world). But that is wrong. Just as Bill is deceived in believing that there is water on the road, Charlie is incapable of seeing the mirage at all, and so fails to know what Alice knows—that there is a real mirage on the road, which appears to some to be water, but which is not. There is a truth about the mirage, despite the fact that it is deceptive, and Alice is authoritative with respect to it precisely because she sees it as it is, not as it appears to the uninitiated."


  (Garfield, Jay L., 'MOONSHADOWS: Taking Conventional Truth Seriously', pp. 29-30)