After studying Buddhist scriptures and learning philosophy, ordinary beings come to understand the ultimate truth in the Madyamaka sense as emptiness.
The logical reasoning involved in the fourfold negation is implemented by ordinary persons in order to understand what the ultimate truth is like, but logic alone is not sufficient to arrive at a direct realization of the actual ultimate.
In contrast to the conventional, the ultimate truth is understood as the way things really are, independent of the concepts and conventions with which ordinary persons engage.
Therefore ultimate truth is ultimately unreal (or emptiness is always empty).
It is also, most importantly, what allows people to understand conceptually what a realization of the ultimate truth is like, and what enables practitioners to correctly develop logical reasoning and engage in proper types of meditative practices.
Ultimate truth takes various forms as it is understood within the Yogācārin tradition.
It is said, according to the Pitāpūtrasamāgama-sūtra, Siddhārtha became a buddha "awakened one" because he fully understood the meaning of the two truths conventional truth (saṁvṛti-satya) and ultimate truth (paramārtha-satya)—and that the reality of all the objects of knowledge, the text says, is exhaustively comprised of the two truths (Sde Dge, dkon brtsegs nga, 60b).
This mere convention is not false; it is simply understood as a mode of perception that is subordinated to the ultimate truth that has been directly experienced in meditation.
More important is the implied theme: that sexual experience, the practice of art, and love are all ways of learning to understand and finally to pass beyond successive phases of development toward ultimate truth and reality.
Gorampa understands the tetralemma as a tool that one uses to analyze the ultimate truth.
This conventional truth can therefore be understood as a kind of screen, an obstacle that stands in the way of seeing the ultimate truth.
