ABSTRACT
This distinction is already made in the Hīnayāna schools. The , for example, distinguish between conventional truths as those entities, such as pots, etc., which are capable of being broken up, either physically or by a mental operation, and ultimate truths as those which cannot be so treated, such as space, form and so on.1 This rather narrow, scholastic usage, and the failure of the śrāvakas to realize the profound implications of these ideas mark them out, according to Vasubandhu wearing his Mahāyāna hat, as inferior in understanding. For the Mahāyānanists, who invest the notions with much deeper soteriological meaning,
, very roughly speaking, refers to the relative world of appearances-things not seen directly as they are but mediated through language and obscured by dualistic and ‘realistic’ thinking;2 and paramārthasatya is the emptiness of all dharmas of inherent, or independent, existence.
