 Ultimate truth, on the other hand, requires the metaphysical transcendence of conventionality. Unlike conventional reality, it is neither presupposed nor projected by ignorance. Ultimate truth, in Gorampa’s words: “is inexpressible through words and is beyond the scope of cognition” (1969a: 370a). The cognition is always conceptual and thus deluded. “Yet ultimate truth is experienced by noble beings in their meditative equipoise, and is free from all conceptual categories. It cannot be expressed through definition, through any defined object, or through anything else” (1969a: 370a). In fact, Sakya goes so far as to combine the definition of ultimate truth with that of intrinsic reality (rang bzhin, svabhāva). When an interlocutor ask this question: “What is the nature of the reality of phenomena?” Gorampa replies that reality is transcendent and it has three defining characteristics: namely: “It is not created by causes and conditions, it exists independently of conventions and of other phenomena; and it does not change” (Gorampa, 1969c: 326a). Like Nāgārjuna’s hypothetical, not real, intrinsic reality, Sakya claims that ultimate truth is ontologically unconditioned, and hence it is not a dependently arisen phenomenon; it is distinct from conventional phenomena in every sense of the word; it is independent of conceptual-linguistic conventions; it is a timeless and unchanging phenomenon.