A Comment on "The Way of the Dialetheist: Contradictions in Buddhism," by Yasuo Deguchi, Jay L. Garfield, and Graham Priest

Offering a response here based in the Three Truths tradition of Tiantai Buddhism as opposed to the Two Truths epistemologies of Indian Mahayana, Huayan, and Chan, the claim is rejected that "true" and "liberating" have different denotations, such that there is a kind of truth that is not in some way liberating. The model for truth in Buddhism, as understood in Tiantai, is the raft, expanded into the concept of upāya. Tiantai claims that it is not only some statements that are self-contradictory, nor is it only some self-contradictory statements that are true, nor only some true statements that are potentially liberating; rather, all statements are self-contradictory, and thus are potentially liberating, and it is for this reason and this reason alone that they are all true.