Conventional truth and ultimate truth

Through the development of right understanding we shall know what is real and what is not real. There are two kinds of truths:
conventional truth (sammutti sacca)

ultimate truth (paramattha sacca)

Conventional truth are people, soul, body, animal, tree or chair, all the

things we have been familiar with throughout our life, all the things we take

for granted. Before we listened to the Dhamma and studied it we only knew

about the conventional truth and we took it for real. When there is no right

understanding one thinks that conventional truth is the only truth. Through

the Dhamma we learn that conventional truth is not real in the absolute or

ultimate sense. This does not mean that we should deny conventional truth

and that we should avoid thinking of concepts. Concepts and ideas are in

our ordinary language expressed by conventional terms and we need these

to make ourselves understood. We cannot help thinking of concepts, it is

conditioned. We all think of concepts but there can be more understanding

of what is real and what is not real.

Namas, mental phenomena, and rupas, physical phenomena, are ultimate

realities, paramattha dhammas. They are different from concepts and ideas.

They can be directly experienced, one at a time, when they appear through

their appropriate doorways. Seeing, for example, is a reality in the ultimate

sense. It can be experienced by everybody who has eyesense; it has its

own unalterable characteristic and there is no need to name it “seeing” in

order to experience it. It is real for everybody. Anger is a reality; it has its

own unalterable characteristic and it can be experienced by everybody

when it appears, without the need to name it anger. Heat is a reality; it has

its own unalterable characteristic and it can be experienced when it appears

through the bodysense without the need to name it “heat”. Seeing, anger or

heat are not concepts, we do not have to use any names in order to know

them; they can be experienced when they appear, one at a time. Realities

have each their own characteristic, their own function and their own

manifestation, they are the same to all people. Paramattha dhammas are

true for everybody and they can be directly experienced through one of the

senses and through the mind-door.

In the beginning it is difficult to know the difference between concepts

(conventional truth) and realities (ultimate truth). When we, for example,

look at a flower and we like it, what are the realities? Usually we are only

interested in the people and things we perceive, in concepts, and we are

ignorant of realities. When we like a flower, there is pleasant feeling, but

there are also other realities besides pleasant feeling. It seems that seeing

and thinking of a flower with pleasure occur at the same time but this is not

so. Seeing experiences visible object, not a flower. We don’t have to call

what is visible “visible object” or “colour”, we don’t have to give it any name,

but there is a reality that can be experienced through the eyesense. We can

verify the truth at this moment, while there is seeing. This will lead to more

understanding of what seeing is and to detachment from the idea of a self.

Seeing is different from thinking of something, but if there were no seeing

we could not think of things and people.Thinking is conditioned by seeing.

There are different namas which each perform their own function and which

are not self. When we look at a flower we take the flower for something

which lasts, but in reality there is no flower which lasts. When we pick it

there are different realities appearing through the bodysense; hardness, for

example, may appear. When we smell its scent, there is only odour

appearing through the nose. We are not used to knowing different objects,

one at a time, through different doorways, but this is the only way to know

the truth. Because of wrong view there are always people and things in our

life which seem to last. We take the unreal for real, we are living in a dream.

We think of people and things. We should not avoid thinking of them, but we

can have less misunderstandings about realities and concepts. Nama and

rupa are not imaginary, they are real. We do not have to name them nama

and rupa in order to distinguish them from each other.