ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Bhāviveka

Bhāviveka is like a big book that talks about what is real and what is not real in the world. Imagine you are playing with toys and you have a toy car and a toy dinosaur. The toy car is real because you can touch it and move it around. But the toy dinosaur is not real because even though it looks like a real dinosaur, it is actually just made of plastic and cannot move on its own.

Now, imagine if everything in the world was like a toy that may or may not be real. Bhāviveka talks about how we can know what is truly real and what is not. It can be very confusing because sometimes things that seem real are actually not real at all. For example, imagine you see a river flowing in front of you. It seems real because you can see the water and you can hear the sound it makes. But the river is not actually a real thing because it is always changing and can disappear altogether.

Bhāviveka helps us understand that there are two types of things in the world. One is called "conventional truth," which means things that are true in our everyday life, like the toy car or the river. But there is also a deeper truth, called "ultimate truth," which is the truth that underlies everything else. This truth is not always easy to understand, but it is important to try and understand it so that we can live our best lives.

So, to sum up, Bhāviveka is like a guidebook that helps us figure out what is real and what is not real in the world. It teaches us that there are different types of truth and helps us understand the deeper truth that lies beneath everything else.
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