Chapter 4.4 - Reality in Madhyamika (d): Rupa and Tathata

The objects of the experience of common people is denoted by rupa. While Tathata of things is their ultimate real nature. This Tathata nature that is not false or deceptive can be experienced only by the Sages. Rupa are composite things and are therefore unreal. It is imaginative constructions by the mundane level of understanding. It is only when the truly real nature of rupa is comprehended that one is said to know their ultimate reality; that is Tathata. When truly comprehended, the determinate entities, rupa etc. enter into Tathata. The things are neither existent nor non-existent, neither arising nor perishing, that all things are in their ultimate nature, purity itself. That is the real nature of things, the nature which is there as it ever has been and has never become different. This is Tathata.

Rupa is of two kinds. One is the understanding of rupa as seen with the eyes of flesh by the common man. This is conceived under false constructions. The other is the comprehension of the true nature by the sages (the realized persons). This nature of rupa is in the sense it is Nirvana. The determinate nature of things (Svabhava) is the true nature of things. Determinations and divisions are the constructions of imaginations and sense perceptions in the mundane level only. The mundane dharma-lakshana means the unique, distinct, natures and their causes and conditions, which produce them. When these district characters of things are analyzed and examined, they are seen at the very end to be understood as unborn anutpada which is their ultimate nature. Unborn dharma is another name of reality, Nirvana. This nature of unborn dharma-lakshana is the ultimate nature of things.