We cannot escape what is produced and conditioned?

[NgXinZhao]

@Dharma

But would you, or anyone else, say the model for the Five Skandhas, for example, is also a convention,

What did the Buddha mean when saying Anurādha "didn't actually find a realized one (tathāgate) in the present life"?

Others may have mixed up 6 sense contacts and self. There’s no self, but 6 sense contacts can be directly experienced, is the whole of experience, in fact. When using the term tathāgata, the Buddha was using it in the ultimate sense of having a self. Since there’s ultimately no self, it cannot be found even when the Buddha was alive. What we call the Buddha is a labeling of certain 5 aggregates which are now long gone. 5 aggregates, 6 sense contacts are the ultimate things. They can be direct…

@Dharma

and how Dependant Origination ties into this?

Secular Buddhists represents scientism

They are concepts from commentaries/abhidhamma. Conventional truth is whatever concept is concerned with the self. Ultimate truth, depending on different traditions, can mean quite different things. Abhidhamma puts ultimate truths as the ultimate breaking down of the physical and mental elements and nibbana. Like the atoms. The goal is to be able to describe things without referring to a self. So speaking in ultimate truth can be very troublesome, as you saw my attempt above. Ultimate truth…