---
type: Concept
bundle: vedanta-epistemology
bundle_version: "0.3.0"
id: vyavaharika
title: "Vyāvahārika — The Empirically Real (Conventional / Transactional Level)"
iast: "vyāvahārika"
devanagari: "व्यावहारिक"
description: "The Empirically Real (Conventional / Transactional Level). Not conventional, not pragmatic."
darshana:
  - Advaita Vedānta
school_scope: "Advaita Vedānta (the three-level ontology — pāramārthika / vyāvahārika / prātibhāsika — is Śaṅkara's framework; Viśiṣṭādvaita and Dvaita reject the framework, holding the world to be fully real and pāramārthika alongside Brahman)"
text_source: "Māṇḍūkya Kārikā 2.16 (Gauḍapāda); Pañcadaśī 1.7–8 (Vidyāraṇya); Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya 2.1.14 (Śaṅkara)"
tags:
  - advaita-vedanta
  - ontology
  - three-levels-of-reality
  - mithya
  - pramana
  - tier-2
  - high
not:
  - term: "conventional"
    why: "'conventional' in Wittgenstein's or Sellars's usage refers to socially constituted meaning or normativity; vyāvahārika is not a matter of social agreement or language-game — it includes natural causality, mathematical truths, physical laws, and all non-socially-constituted features of the empirical world"
    instead: "Keep The Empirically Real untranslated; do not substitute the English term."
  - term: "pragmatic"
    why: "Jamesian pragmatism holds that true = useful-for-action; vyāvahārika is not a pragmatic category — it names a level of reality, not a criterion of truth; a vyāvahārika claim is not true because it's useful but because it accurately describes what obtains within the empirical frame"
  - term: "phenomenal (Kantian)"
    why: "Kant's phenomena are objects as-conditioned-by-mind's-forms-of-intuition (space and time imposed by the knowing subject); vyāvahārika is not about mind's imposition on raw sensory input but about the level of reality within which intersubjective experience and valid knowledge operate — it does not presuppose a Kantian epistemology"
  - term: "ordinary language"
    why: "ordinary-language philosophy (Austin, Ryle) treats ordinary usage as philosophically authoritative; vyāvahārika is an ontological category, not a linguistic one; it includes formal sciences and technical discourse, not just colloquial language"
  - term: "consensus reality"
    why: "consensus reality (in New Age or constructivist usage) implies reality is a product of social agreement; vyāvahārika reality exists independently of any individual's or collective's agreement — gravity and causation are vyāvahārika regardless of whether anyone agrees to call them real"
  - term: "social construction"
    why: "social construction theory holds that natural categories are human-made; vyāvahārika includes natural-world categories (fire burns, water flows, bodies are born and die) that are not constructed; its mithyātva is a pāramārthika-level claim about ontological dependency, not a claim that experience is constructed"
related:
  - /concepts/mithya.md
  - /concepts/paramarthika.md
  - /concepts/pratibhasika.md
  - /concepts/pramana.md
  - /concepts/badha-badhita.md
  - /concepts/adhyasa.md
timestamp: "2026-06-20"
okf_version: "0.2"
license: "CC BY-SA 4.0"
---

# Vyāvahārika — व्यावहारिक

**Not:** conventional, pragmatic, phenomenal (Kantian), ordinary language, consensus reality, social construction

Vyāvahārika is the conventional or transactional level of reality in Advaita Vedānta's three-level ontology — the level at which ordinary empirical experience occurs, at which the pramāṇas operate and produce valid knowledge, and at which all causality, natural law, social relation, and cognitive function are fully real. It is the primary level of the world's mithyā status: the world is not merely apparent (prātibhāsika) but genuinely operative within the empirical frame, and not absolutely real (pāramārthika) because its existence depends on Brahman as substratum.

Vyāvahārika is the intermediate position in the three-level structure:

| Level | Term | Status | Sublated by |
|-------|------|---------|-------------|
| Absolute | Pāramārthika | Trikālābādhita (never sublated) | Nothing — uncancellable |
| Empirical | **Vyāvahārika** | **Real within its frame; sublated at liberation** | **Brahma-jñāna** |
| Apparent | Prātibhāsika | Real only from a deluded standpoint | Immediate corrective cognition |

## Etymology

From Sanskrit *vyavahāra* (transaction, everyday dealing, business, convention, practical usage — from *vi* + *ava* + root *hṛ*, to carry out, to do) + suffix *-ika* (pertaining to, belonging to, connected with). Literally: that which pertains to or functions at the level of transactional dealing; the real of everyday practical engagement.

The term *vyavahāra* in Sanskrit carries connotations of business, legal transaction, social custom, and practical conduct — the actual world in which people live, trade, make contracts, bear children, and die. Vyāvahārika captures this: the level at which practical engagement is meaningful, binding, and real.

## What Is and Is Not Vyāvahārika

Vyāvahārika includes all of the following:
- The natural world: fire, water, earth, air, space, bodies, birth, death
- Causal laws: seed-sprout, action-result, cause-effect sequences
- Social and moral relations: dharma, karma, karma-phala (fruits of action)
- Mathematical and logical truths: the Pythagorean theorem is vyāvahārika
- The pramāṇas themselves and their results: pratyakṣa, anumāna, etc. operate at the vyāvahārika level and produce valid vyāvahārika knowledge
- The teachings and instruments of Vedānta, including Śruti and the path of inquiry: these are vyāvahārika instruments for the removal of adhyāsa, which is itself a vyāvahārika-level structure

Vyāvahārika does NOT include:
- The snake in the rope (that is prātibhāsika — apparent, not even intersubjectively consistent)
- The sky-lotus or the son of a barren woman (those are asat — non-existent entirely)

## The Key Distinguishing Feature: Intersubjective Consistency

The technical criterion separating vyāvahārika from prātibhāsika is *intersubjective consistency* — what is vyāvahārika is experienced consistently by all persons under the same conditions.

- The rope is seen as a rope by everyone looking with adequate light: vyāvahārika.
- The snake is seen only by the person in poor lighting with the right prior conditioning: prātibhāsika.
- The waking world's mountains, rivers, people, and buildings are experienced consistently across all observers: vyāvahārika.
- The dream-world's contents are accessible only to the dreamer: prātibhāsika.

This is why the Advaita answer to "is the world an illusion?" is always "no" — the world is vyāvahārika (empirically real, intersubjectively consistent, causally operative), not prātibhāsika (apparent, subjective, immediately sublatable by corrective cognition). Calling the world "an illusion" collapses the vyāvahārika/prātibhāsika distinction and produces exactly the misreading Śaṅkara's framework is designed to prevent.

## Vyāvahārika and the Pramāṇas

All six pramāṇas (pratyakṣa, anumāna, upamāna, arthāpatti, anupalabdhi, śabda) operate at the vyāvahārika level. Their results are valid at that level — the knowledge they produce is abādhita (uncontradicted) within the vyāvahārika frame. The mithyātva of the world does not undermine this validity: the pot that pratyakṣa establishes is genuinely there; the fire that anumāna establishes from smoke is genuinely burning.

What the pramāṇas cannot do is operate at the pāramārthika level to establish Brahman's nature — because their very operation presupposes a pramātā (knower) who is already at the vyāvahārika level, already in adhyāsa, already identifying consciousness with a mind-body complex. For pāramārthika knowledge, only śabda as apauruṣeya Śruti can serve (see shabda-pramana.md and adhyasa.md).

## Vyāvahārika and Karma

Karma (action and its fruits) operates entirely within the vyāvahārika frame. The moral order — cause and effect in the ethical domain — is a vyāvahārika reality. This means:

1. Karma is real and binding for all beings who remain within the vyāvahārika frame (i.e., all beings in adhyāsa).
2. Liberation (mokṣa) removes the jīva from the domain of karma not by destroying karma but by dissolving the adhyāsic identification that made karma applicable — the jīvanmukta's actions produce no new karma because there is no ahaṃkāra (ego) to be their agent.
3. The teaching that "karma is unreal because the world is mithyā" is a misread: mithyā does not mean karma is inoperative; it means karma is operative within a frame whose ultimate status is dependent on Brahman.

## The Sublation Event

Vyāvahārika reality is sublated by brahma-jñāna (direct realization of Brahman as the only reality). This sublation is not phenomenological — the jīvanmukta continues to experience the empirical world, continues to feel hunger and see mountains. What is sublated is the *ahaṃkāric identification* — the "I am this body-mind" claim that made the vyāvahārika world appear as independently real.

The technical term: *bādha* (sublation — see badha-badhita.md). The world is *bādhita* by brahma-jñāna — not destroyed, not made to disappear, but cognized as mithyā — dependent on Brahman, without independent standing.

## Cross-References
- [Mithyā](mithya.md) — the ontological status of which vyāvahārika is the primary level; the world is mithyā precisely because it is vyāvahārika rather than pāramārthika
- [Pāramārthika](paramarthika.md) — the absolute level; what vyāvahārika is not; Brahman alone
- [Prātibhāsika](pratibhasika.md) — the apparent level; lower than vyāvahārika; the snake in the rope, the dream-world
- [Pramāṇa](pramana.md) — all pramāṇas operate at the vyāvahārika level; their validity is real within this frame
- [Bādha / Bādhita](badha-badhita.md) — the sublation of the vyāvahārika frame by brahma-jñāna
- [Adhyāsa](adhyasa.md) — the structural superimposition that makes the vyāvahārika appear as independently real rather than as Brahman's dependent appearance

## Audience Metaphor

Like the operating rules of a dream that, from within the dream, are completely binding — if you jump off a building in the dream, you fall. Fire burns. Cause and effect hold. From within the dream, these are not optional or 'merely conventional.' They are real in every sense that matters for navigation. But they are not real the way the sleeping consciousness is real. Vyāvahārika is exactly that: real in every sense that matters for navigation, but not real in the deepest sense. The analogy breaks in one direction: we cannot 'wake up' from the vyāvahārika world by a simple act of attention — only brahma-jñāna dissolves its ultimate status, and even then the body lives on.

## Citations

1. [Māṇḍūkya Kārikā](/references/mandukya-karika.md) 2.16 (Gauḍapāda) — the empirical world as consistently experienced in waking state; the vyāvahārika-prātibhāsika distinction via waking-dream comparison
2. [Pañcadaśī](/references/panchadashi.md) 1.7–8 (Vidyāraṇya) — formal statement of the three-level ontology; vyāvahārika as real within its frame, sublated at liberation
3. [Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya](/references/brahmasutra-bhasya.md) 2.1.14 (Śaṅkara) — anirvacanīya (indescribable-as-sat-or-asat) status of the empirical world; why this avoids both nihilism and naive realism
