 Truths are objects of knowledge in Madhyamaka ontology, so the quality of being known by a mind is an imperative and to some degree a tautologous assertion. Being impermanent and causally efficacious implies, in Buddhist thought, that they are dependently-arisen, that they arise on the basis of impermanent causes and conditions that are themselves, dependently-arisen. In his own commentary on these stanzas, MAV, Śāntarakṣita explicitly describes conventional truths as dependently-arisen. He goes on to state that conventional truths are known with conceptual thought and designated by worldly convention (MAV, 88–93). Thus an object’s lack of an inherent nature is an ultimate truth. Those impermanent, dependently arisen, causally efficacious objects of knowledge that are known by conceptual thinking are conventional truths. This is how Śāntarakṣita presents his views on the ontological status of phenomena in his texts MA and MAV.