The Nature of Reality
The purpose of this article is to present no more and no less than the nature of reality as it
is, irrespective of whether individual human beings are able to follow both the logic and its
necessary implications. Reality is by no means democratic or equal in any sense. Most human
beings cannot perceive reality correctly even if they wished. This is because of the perceived
complexity both from the nature’s side and that of our own as well. My task is to make things
as intelligible as I can, which is the sole motivation for this article. What “making things
intelligible” here means, is a question that becomes focal in this treatment. Due to the sheer
complexity of the subject matter, I cannot deliver everything for everyone. Everything I
present here can and also needs to be investigated by anyone wanting to learn about reality. I
will not go deep into details, but I will provide waypoints into literature to pave the journey.
Ultimately, it remains of course in the hands of the reader whether and how much they benefit
from this discussion.
The relation between the text and the reader exemplifies our relation with reality. What I
just said about things being in the hands of the reader is not entirely correct. Things are of
course not altogether in our hands, far from it. But since such an understanding makes us
uncomfortable, we choose to say things which are conventionally accepted. If the reader now
spontaneously starts to think of countless things in their life that also are only conventionally
so, they are, I think, on the right track to something.
The state of affairs
When you look around, what do you see? Do you see peace and harmony or war and
violence? Inexpensive transfer of information makes it easy for us to follow the ignorance of
the humankind in daily news on killings, wars and other nasty things people inflict upon
others. “If you don’t believe in my fantastic imaginary figure, I will kill you!” In these troubled
times, troubles may seem overwhelming. The increase of human population does not make
life easier for us. You start with the idea of giving service to others, then soon you realise you
are that much better than others and you deserve more than what you are receiving. And
since others think the same way conflict cannot be prevented. You don’t want to see its name,
but it is greed.
If I were to ask people around Europe how they perceived the nature of reality in terms of
permanence or visions of things after they die, I would mostly receive two basic types of
answers: (1) “you are born, you live and then you die, that’s it; nothing else is there”, or (2)
“after you die, your soul goes to heaven to spend the eternity there with God”.
Amasingly, these very same types of answers were given in India already 3000 years ago
by philosophers of two distinctive perspectives: the materialists, who believed that reality is
the material things and when people die they simply cease to be, they become annihilated.
The concept of nihilism refers to this conviction. Eternalists provided a competing conviction
by claiming that there is an intrinsic nature in all phenomena and thus when a person dies, a
component, such as a soul, carrying its true nature continues to exist for eternity. So, not much
has changed in thousands of years.
When the Buddha Gautama around 2600 years ago, before coming to understand how
reality really is, started to study its nature, he was guided by teachers of both these alternative
philosophies, the nihilists and the eternalists. Remember that he would have received similar
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instructions today in year 2015 CE by most people, either atheists or those with a theistic
inclination1. To be sure most people with the materialist inclination during their adulthood
turn to eternalism when they approach old age and death (can you guess why this is so?).
The Buddha-to-be was not content with these extreme views, however. Now comes a
touching point that needs to be perceived correctly: he arrived at the correct understanding
through years of hard work together with an exceptional mind of his. What needs to be
perceived with clarity is that there is only one viable way to understand reality that
corresponds with everything we know and have been created throughout the history of
mankind. It is not a matter of opinion or “you see it that way and I see it this way”. Reality
itself, together with the universal logic of mankind, dictate how reality must be understood by
human beings. Thus, the task at hand is empirical, not metaphysical. I know that the modern
human dislikes greatly the idea of being constrained. So, there is a tendency in us to slip into
metaphysics as it serves better our need to say anything about anything.
There are two exceptional minds in the history of mankind that we need in arriving at the
correct wisdom. We need the mind of the Buddha because we can safely say that he arrived at
the correct wisdom. It takes years of study to be able to clear away the burden that social
groups start immediately piling onto anything their religious inclinations focus on. And the
religious inclinations of human beings are extremely inflammatory, as can be evidenced by
looking at the history of mankind and the way things are today. It is simply amasing to see
how a purely scientific method used by one of the greatest scientists in our history has been
turned into countless streams of quarrelling religions and worship.
Even though the Buddha clearly understood reality correctly he was not without human
faults. After becoming enlightened he hesitated for some time before resolving to start
teaching others about the nature of reality. For entirely correct reasons he assumed that most
people would not be able to understand his teaching. For the same reason most readers of this
article will not be able to get it enough right to become motivated in learning about the only
thing that is of any importance. The Buddha needed to put his words so that ordinary people
could understand what he was saying. This creates a problem on its own. The result is
sometimes burdensome reading for anyone with the capacity to understand things clearly.
Many of the scriptures are in the form of dialogue, written much later by others. These others
were already religiously inclined, so it is natural that the contents manifest such tendencies. A
major problem with this is it leads the mind toward an understanding depending on faith.
Buddha did explain the true nature of reality. His aim was not to create a religion or system
of faith, or any such thing. He actively tried to prevent the unpreventable to happen – without
success. As soon as his cremation was over the hangaround set up an organisation. It is the
common people who turn everything into faith because they do not understand things
correctly, and because they are hardwired to doing so. Throughout the world you can see
many types of Buddhist rituals and religious systems based on every imaginable type of ideas,
some arguing that by these rituals they are actually only paying respect to the gift that the
Buddha gave to the world. Well, they should not. Instead, they should understand.
So the proper target group for the Buddha’s words do not enjoy the words put in such an
unintelligent and religiously inconsistent way. Someone else is needed to repair the situation.
Another exceptional mind was born some 500 years later. His mind operates through logic
and we know him by the name Nāgārjuna. He provides us with the logic that necessitates the
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It seems that theistic inclination is hardwired in the working properties of our mind. An outstanding
research on this issue is carried out by Pascal Boyer, and reported in his book Religion Explained: The
Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (available also in Finnish: Ja hminen loi jumalat. Miten uskonto
selitetään). This book should be read by every human being for us to understand the basic conditioning people
are manifesting in their every desire to pray the Lord or any other fantastic imaginary figure.
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only available path for the reality to unfold for human beings. If you disagree with him, you
disagree with your very own existence and everything we can understand about reality.
The Buddha understood reality as it is, but his words, as written by others, are not
promoting this perception well in our time. Nāgārjuna understood what the Buddha taught
and was able to explain things in a way that carries longer in time as his words are the words
of logic which apply through time, as we can witness.
What differentiates this perception from anything else you can find throughout the history
of mankind is this. It does not contain logical errors or inherent inconsistencies or infantile
ideas like all religious systems do. At the same time it does not offer only partial, conventional
explanations like science, but instead it provides a method for understanding the nature of
reality in its totality. To an ordinary mind all this sounds too fantastic, I know. The path is
open for all to tread and yet only few are able to enter the gate. In what follows my intention
is to explain why this is the case.
The Middle Way
After learning how the two extremes operate, eternalism and materialism (nihilism), the
Buddha simply turned away from those, rejecting them as incorrect solutions. In today’s
world nearly all human beings are attached to erroneous views. If Buddha ever really believed
to be able to improve the understanding of the larger audience, history has proven him wrong.
Modern confused atheists are basically materialists, but due to confusion, they sometimes
manifest eternalist tendencies, especially later in life. Modern confused theists base their
perception of reality in some vague mixture of faith and science, always choosing the bestsounding option when asked (without really understanding the implications of their choices).
But the aim of this article is to reduce confusion, so I cannot remain where nearly all abide.
Why they dwell in confusion must depend on natural limitations which prevent them from
seeing things clearly.
In similar fashion the Buddha saw clearly how erroneous perception prevents adherents of
those extreme views from arriving at the correct understanding. He had to arrive at the
correct perception by himself, without a teacher. “Be your own light”, he advised others,
speaking of his own experience. The middle path is the only viable way for us to perceive
reality as it is.
I try to keep things as uncomplicated as I can, but dear reader, I must warn you again.
Understanding the Middle Way correctly takes very much effort and most people are unable
to follow the logic provided by Nāgārjuna. This is because the logic one may be familiar with, if
A then B, collapses as infantile in front of something you have never experienced before.
The Buddha realised that the correct way to perceive reality is not eternally existent nor
arising from nothingness and returning to nothingness. Nāgārjuna provides the logic for the
impossibility of either option. The only option available logically is that all phenomena arise
dependent on other phenomena. No phenomenon can have intrinsic nature that would be
independent of other phenomena. This is the Middle Way.
The other side of the coin of this dependent origination, as it is often called, is emptiness of
intrinsic existence. They are factually the same thing. Since things cannot have intrinsic nature
entirely independent from others, they have to be empty of self-existence. Thus, emptiness
does not mean that phenomena do not exist conventionally, as we know they do, they just
cannot have something we would regard as their very own independent nature unrelated to
any other phenomenon. In order to perceive the logic of dependent origination and emptiness
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correctly, one needs to study Nāgārjuna carefully. I will provide some waypoints and
guidelines at the end of this article.
The Two Truths
In the core of understanding reality correctly lies a conception of Two Truths. We need to
understand two different truths about reality simultaneously. Conventional truth about reality
deals with our conventional perception of the world. Many things seem more or less
permanent and we can often easily distinguish between things, and especially what we are
certain about is our own identity, if we have not lost our mental stability.
The reason why this type of understanding is not enough if we are to perceive reality
correctly is because through logic none of these conventional assumptions can be validated.
Permanence of any phenomenon would require it to have an intrinsic nature independent of
any other phenomenon and that cannot be validated in reality. Such a phenomenon would
need to arise from itself and endure into the infinite future, neither of which can be
established. As no phenomenon can be entirely independent from other phenomena, they all
are interdependent. The reason we are able to distinguish between phenomena is because we
impose names and characters onto them by our own volition. That gives the name
conventional truth as we are able to perceive the world because of the conventions we follow
and share.
Perhaps the most difficult bit for an ordinary mind is to come to realise that also our own
identity, our most precious possession, the self as such, is nothing more than a convention. It
often comes as a shock for those who approach Buddhist psychology for the first time, and the
ensuing reaction distinguishes between people. Those with low capacity turn away and are
unable to proceed. Paradoxically, understanding the emptiness of the self is one of the
psychologically healthiest things one can ever realise2.
Everything we can say or think about reality belongs to the conventional realm. A central
understanding about the conventional reality is that conventions are tacit agreements among
people. We perceive the world as we do largely because we have a common understanding of
what is meant by the concept of “table”, for instance.
In the conventional reality phenomena seem as if they possessed intrinsic nature. This is
because we project conventional nature upon phenomena from our side. It is important to
understand that such a projection is arbitrary. On the other hand, these projections are useful
as they render distinguishing between phenomena possible in the conventional sense. In the
conventional reality causal connections operate just the way you have been taught: if A then
B. Without the conventional reality we would not have all these technologies around us to
ease our living.
Even though the counterpart for the conventional truth is called the ultimate truth, it is not
in any sense more important or better or truer. It simply exists irrespective of whether you
understand it or not. And since most human beings do not perceive it, they cannot understand
reality correctly.
What necessitates the existence of ultimate reality is the way conventional reality
manifests itself. We are able to establish two facts about reality which give rise to both the
conventional and the ultimate reality: (1) The causality between phenomena A and B (if A
then B) is known to be only conventionally true as we decide on our own things that belong to
2
As I have written elsewhere, we should soberly compare the 3000+ year-long tradition of Buddhist
psychology with its juvenile Western counterpart of just over 100 years.
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and those that demarcate between phenomena A and B. (2) We also know that a closer logical
analysis reveals that there cannot be any ultimately true causation between A and B. If A and
B share an identity (if they have anything in common), then A cannot be the cause for B since
A already contains B. If they don’t share any identity, then A cannot be the cause for B since
without any shared identity anything can give rise to anything else. Following Nāgārjuna’s
exposition, ultimately, phenomena cannot arise from themselves, nor from another, nor from
both, nor without a cause. This gives rise to dependent origination.
Our task does not end at understanding both these truths. The point is in understanding
them both simultaneously throughout our lives. In the conventional sense phenomena arise
and disintegrate through observed causal relations. We give them names and see birth and
death occurring. In the ultimate sense there are no phenomena arising, nor ceasing, no
barriers to be found, no birth, nor death.
Some Nāgārjuna’s readers get stuck at the very end of his reasoning. Some writers have
difficulties in explaining Nāgārjuna’s logic right to the very end. They may have difficulties
dealing with the assumed infinite regress problem of emptiness. This is because they assume
that they are able to conceptually reason their way through the whole thing, which won’t
work as the ultimate truth is inaccessible from where they try to enter. This connects to a
more general problem of misunderstanding the nature of ultimate truth.
Those who misunderstand the nature of emptiness as ultimately true account of all
phenomena become anxious when someone suggests that could it be so that emptiness itself
is just a conventional concept and therefore Nāgārjuna’s account on Buddha and Nirvana
collapse into the conventional. They then try to repair the argument by suggesting that
emptiness is itself empty, unrealising that this just creates an infinite line of emptinesses.
Of course emptiness is a conventional concept. Otherwise we could not talk about it and
share its meaning as containing nothing. By conventional logic we understand the dichotomy
between empty and full, and so forth. The point is that emptiness as the ultimately true
account of phenomena can only be perceived from the ultimate side, not from the
conventional side. Those who only read Nāgārjuna, cannot perceive this as this wisdom can
only be attained through meditation.
The Buddha instructed us to understand that all of his teaching is after all only a method to
end suffering. When you have arrived at the other side of the river you need to abandon the
raft. You should not start carrying it on dry land; instead you should simply leave it. It has
already provided what it is good for. Likewise, what is needed at the final limit of perceiving
the ultimate truth is kicking away of the ladder by which we have climbed. Without release we
hang on to the ladder and cannot enter the gate.
The atheist-materialist-nihilist conviction about reality is found incorrect as phenomena
cannot arise without a cause, nor from themselves, nor from outside of themselves, nor from
both, and if they had intrinsic nature as they should if they existed as independent entities,
they could not disintegrate either. In the similar fashion, the theist-eternalist conviction is
found impossible as something that is eternal cannot arise as it already has arisen, and so
forth.
What makes perceiving the nature of reality correctly difficult is not only the slightly
demanding logical reasoning that is required, but also another fact which ties certain things in
reality together in ways which are beyond the powers of human beings. The first such a tie is
between the perception of reality and the method. So far, the method I have discussed deals
with critical empirism and logic. But in order to perceive the ultimate truth and the reality as
it is, one needs to make use of another type of method, namely meditation.
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Meditation
Meditation as a method of discovery is of course much different when compared with
critical thinking. In some sense you need to train your mind in the exact opposite direction,
away from the rational and critical reasoning. This is, however, exactly what you need to do if
you are to come to perceive the reality as it is. I am not going to go into technicalities here, but
you need to understand one thing about meditation. It is a paradoxical method. It opens the
realms of truth to anyone who perceives the practice correctly and is willing to persevere
with patience, without a goal, and it remains completely useless to those who treat it
incorrectly as an instrument for some purpose. It’s like a living organism, which it of course is.
You cannot fool meditation and you cannot fool reality either. It is the reality who either
opens itself to you, or not.
The main obstacle with meditation for a common person is that it does not follow your
orders. Even though I call it a method it has characteristics that hardly fit with a tool. It is
perhaps more of a companion because once you become more acquainted with it, you cannot
distinguish between mediation and non-meditation any longer. We can use all kinds of names
and try to characterise it in countless ways, and it’s all ok, but we cannot stabilise it in a way
that would convey its conventional nature correctly to everyone. That makes it such an
intriguing method of discovery.
To further complicate the journey of one who wants to get to the source of reality, there is
another component also tied to the complex of reality and its methods, namely morality.
Morality
Morality is connected to all this in a peculiar way, that is, peculiar for those who have been
conditioned to understand that things are separate, that things work without the involvement
of other things, and so forth. For a modern, quasi-scientific mind all this is rather distant, but
for anyone who has come to understand these connections experientially, the connection with
morality is intrinsic.
Reality is constructed in such a way that it can be perceived correctly if and only if three
human components are all harmonised. Without wisdom a person cannot perceive any need
to understand reality. When initial wisdom is present a person may investigate further.
Meditation requires wisdom as ignorance is an obstacle to stabilise meditation. Through
meditation knowledge acquired through wisdom deepens and changes form. Meditation is not
possible without moral development. A person entangled in immoral activities cannot
stabilise any form of meditation. Their mind remains scattered and no entry is allowed.
So, reality itself has arranged things quite appropriately. The door is opened to anyone
with the proper characteristics. The door remains shut for human beings who do not have
what it takes to see things as they are.
Concluding remarks
Revealing the truth about reality is always risky business. Each of us perceives reality in
our unique ways. Just like the Buddha hesitated before starting to teach, I have had my doubts
about the usefulness of presenting this article. I am hesitant because I can see that those who
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understand, they will do so without my help and those who cannot possibly follow the
reasoning of this article, will turn away anyway. In this sense, I cannot do much to improve
anyone’s situation.
Someone may ask about the usefulness of perceiving reality in such a complex way. My
answer may seem striking at first, but it should make sense after a more thorough analysis:
there is nothing else at all in human life that really should be discovered. People talk nonsense
when they are asked about things like “the meaning of life”. It is simply because they are
confused. They are seemingly adults, but their perception of reality is at the level of a child.
These very same people start to feel all kinds of strange feelings when they approach old
age and death. They cry a lot and feel bad about themselves, they are full of so many
complications because they have spent their entire lives looking for amusement and comfort.
And now they are just as confused as they have always been.
A balanced way of seeing the reality is a combination of both the conventional and the
ultimate. When you train consistently this becomes a natural way of experiencing everything.
There is no event that would be out of place, or any place that would be inappropriate. Seeing
reality just as it is, is not just an upgrade onto a higher form of being. It also does exactly what
the Buddha explained it does: it ends suffering, right there.
Literature
There are at least two good books that explain in detail how Nāgārjuna’s account operates.
With patience this unfamiliar logic opens and in time one is able to grasp the whole structure
of Nāgārjuna’s extraordinary perception. Buddha’s words is another useful theme to
investigate. I will provide a couple of good books that pave the way to how the Buddha’s
account operates. The Buddha’s discourses themselves are downloadable for free from
numerous sources, as are other Buddhist books, eg. at www.buddhanet.net
Here are a couple of books of both themes listed in a suggested reading order which may be
handy:
(N1)
Siderits, Mark and Katsura, Shōryū
Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.
(N2)
Garfield, Jay L. (1995) The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. Nāgārjuna’s
Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.
(B1)
Walpola, Rahula (1974) What the Buddha Taught.
(B2)
Bodhi, Bhikkhu (2005) In the Buddha’s Words. An Anthology of Discourses from the
Pāli Canon.
2015
(2013) Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way.
Jukka Kaisla
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