 Title
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Preface
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 Chapter 1: Pramuditā
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Chapter 2: Vimalā
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Chapter 3: Prabhākarī
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Chapter 4: Arciṣmatī
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Chapter 5: Sudurjayā
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Chapter 6: Abhimukhī
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Chapter 7: Dūraṃgamā
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Chapter 8: Acalā
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Chapter 9: Sādhumatī
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Chapter 10: Dharmameghā
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Chapter 11: buddhabhūmi
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And why will disregarding these two hinder liberation? To explain:
Conventional truth works as a means to reach an end.
The ultimate is like the end one tries to reach.
But those who do not see how these should be discerned
Are led by faulty fancies down mistaken paths. (6.80)
As stated in the noble Absorption Revealing Reality:
The knowers of the world themselves declared,
And not by hearsay, that there are two truths:
The relative and the ultimate.
There is no such thing as a third truth.
That beings may benefit from developing
Faith in the bliss-gone ones,
For beings’ sake the Victor taught
The relative to aid the world.
Relatively the Lion of Men would
Identify six classes of beings:
Hell-beings, animals and spirits,
Demigods, humans and gods.
You, so incomparable, taught about beings
Of the world in all their distinctions:
In terms of social rank, the high and low,
As citizens, the rich and the poor,
As slaves and servants,
Men, women and neuters.
The wise who have understood relative truth
Teach in this way to aid the world.
Cyclic beings drawn to these states
Are driven by the eight concerns of beings:
Gain and loss, fame and disrepute,
Praise and blame, pleasure and pain.
When success is gained attachment grows,
While encountering loss upsets their minds;
The rest may be similarly represented.
These eight sicknesses cause constant harm.
Do understand that their judgement is mistaken
Who profess the relative to be the ultimate.
Those who say the repulsive is appealing,
Suffering is pleasure, who claim an inherent self
Where there is no self, who say the impermanent
Is permanent; they hold to signs who are thus inclined,
And when learning of the doctrine of the Sugata
They will fear it, and lacking understanding reject it.
And those who reject the teachings of the Sugata
Will suffer unbearably in the realms of hell.
Immature children who unwisely pursue pleasure
Will endure abundant sufferings.
Only those who do not err, but understand
The teachings that benefit the world,
Can shed them like a worn-out serpent skin,
Pass beyond existence and find peace.
‘All phenomena lack inherent existence,
Are empty and signless – that is the ultimate.’
Those who hear this and rejoice,
Will find the unsurpassed awakening.1
Victorious One, you who see the lack of skandhas,
The absence of all elements and sense fields,
That this house of faculties lacks all identity,
O Sage, you see all things to be like this.2
So how can there ever be liberation for those separated from the relative and ultimate truths? Hence, these proponents of consciousness certainly stray, following mistaken pathways due to their erroneous ideas.
To teach the conventional truth is a method. As stated:
What is heard and what is taught
Is the inexpressible dharma –
Nothing expressed apart from superimpositions,
But heard and taught nonetheless.3
Only by basing oneself on the conventional truth can the ultimate be taught. And by understanding the teachings on the ultimate, the ultimate state can be attained. As stated in the Treatise:
Without relying on the conventional
The ultimate cannot be indicated.
Without relying on the ultimate
Transcendence cannot be reached.4
To teach the ultimate is what the method aims to do, what it should result in; meaning that it is what is aimed for, the result, that to be attained, or what should be understood.