The two-truths model applied to Jesus and the Cross

Image via Wikipedia

The two-truths model in Buddhism suggests that we must look at any spiritual reading and discern whether it is referring to an ahistorical, or timeless, truth which is only approached indirectly through mythic language and metaphor or whether it is referring to a more mundane truth about particular events as seen with ordinary eyes. The former is sometimes referred to as belonging to a deeper and more inclusive view of reality, while the latter is confined to a narrower empirical view reinforced by our general understanding of how things are supposed to be.

This does not mean that a religious view is always on the level of the mythical/mystical level of understanding or that secular views are always generic/mundane. Someone who takes miraculous language literally (it says Jesus turned water into wine and therefore actual water became actual wine) is rendering that teaching in an ordinary mode of perception, while someone who takes everyday language poetically (such as someone who feels a new sense of depth and interconnectedness upon hearing that we are all made of star dust) is rendering that teaching in an extraordinary mode of perception.

The more inclusive mode has been referred to by teachers such as Thich Nhat Hahn as the ultimate perspective and the more restrictive mode has been dubbed the relative perspective. The challenge for interpreting Biblical texts with this approach to determine which passages and images should be taken from the ultimate perspective and which from the relative.

Take the figure of Jesus and the symbolism of his Cross, for example.

God is form (the immanence of God)

This is part of a series reflecting on God-talk and Buddhist terminology. It is an opening to dialogue, not a final word on the subject.


There is a quite a bit of discussion in Western Buddhism about form and emptiness, as these concepts are featured prominently in the Heart Sutra which in turn has a close association with Zen. This invites comparisons between the Buddhist teaching of non-duality and the concepts of transcendence and immanence. The emphasis today is on form.

Form seems simple enough, given the Western emphasis on materialism. Everything that exists can be reduced to some measurable form of matter or energy, so form is anything composed of these things. Many English-language books on Buddhism use this frame of reference as an analogy to explain emptiness by pointing to subtler and subtler forms of energy until one gets to the fuzzy level of what has been dubbed the quantum field (or in some versions the quantum foam), which itself is compared to emptiness.

This can be misleading as it places the emphasis on an external process rooted in a strictly materialist paradigm. It is fine as an analogy, but prudence suggests it is risky and and unnecessary to draw a direct equivalence. Form is a phenomenological concept that precedes any explanation of the basis of what is being described. Form is, in a sense, anything which can be described and is hence born of discrimination and labeling by the mind. Feeling, intuitions, imaginings, logical musings, judgements, and the like are forms as much as tables, chairs, and chew bones.

In other words, whatever mind is or isn't, wherever and however mind originates, it is itself the origin of form.