The doctrine of the two truths--conventional and ultimate--evolved as early Buddhists struggled to reconcile apparent contradictions within the collected sayings of the Buddha. Over time, the teachings on the two truths have taken their place at the heart of the Buddhist view of reality. Buddhist philosophers have made them central to the elaboration of an abhidharma, a "higher teaching" that explains how the mind apprehends and misapprehends the world. It is through the two truths that we understand how mind attaches itself to objects having no intrinsic existence, thereby creating suffering. Understood as a teaching on reality as opposed to merely a linguistic distinction, the doctrine played a key role for the followers of Mahayana in articulating the essential differences between their own view and what they called the Hinayana view-especially in defining the central ideas of selflessness and emptiness. Echoes from an Empty Sky, for the first time, eschews an exclusively Mahayana standpoint for the exploration of the two truths in order to examine the doctrine in the context of the Hinayana.

Echoes from an Empty Sky, John Buescher, Snow Lion Publications, Paperback, 2005, 176 pp., $16.95

John B. Buescher received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the Universiety of Virginia. He currently heads the Voice of American's Tibetan Broadcast Service to Tibet and South Asia.

Introduction

Ancient Indian Speculation on Language and Reality
The Beginnings of Grammar
Philosophical and Religious Issues Connected to Grammar

Early Buddhist Views on Language, Truth, and Interpretation
Denying the Preeminence of Any Particular Language
Searching for the Final Doctrine
Collecting and Standardizing the Teaching
The Growth of the Abhidharma

The Buddha�s Word
The Truth behind the Multitude of Forms
The Buddha's Ultimate Word and Ultimate Truth
Definitive Sutras and Those Whose Meaning Must Be Drawn Out
The Quest for Interpretive Clarity

Two Truths
Statements or Objects? Existent or Nonexistent?
Two Truths and Four Truths
The Vaibhasika School and the Two Truths

A Gelukpa Presentation of the Two Truths in the �Sravaka� Schools

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Bibliography
Notes
Index