Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archive

Tiantai Buddhism

First published Wed Nov 19, 2014; substantive revision Fri Aug 31, 2018

Tiantai is the name of a mountain and surrounding geographicallocation in China, literally meaning “platform of thesky”, but the term is traditionally used to denote a particularschool of Mahāyāna Buddhism with historical connections to thatlocale. In this article, the term “Tiantai” will be usedto refer to the philosophical ideas developed from the sixth toeleventh centuries by this school, as expounded in the writings of itsthree most representative figures: Tiantai Zhiyi (538–597),Jingxi Zhanran (711–782) and Siming Zhili (960–1028).

To translate Tiantai’s rather technical scholastic terminology andits typically Buddhist soteriological orientation into somethingapproaching traditional philosophical categories, we can start byidentifying a few hashtag themes that are characteristic of Tiantaithinking. Tiantai is: a thoroughgoing contextualism, a thoroughgoingholism, a thoroughgoing monism, and a theory of absolute immanence. Itasserts an exceptionless impermanence, exceptionlessanti-substantialism, and exceptionless ambiguity of identity for allfinite and conditional entities. Epistemologically this entailsthoroughgoing skepticism about all unconditional claims, andthoroughgoing anti-realism. Ethically it implies a thoroughgoingrenunciation of all finite aims, as well as thoroughgoing repudiationof all determinate moral rules, moral consequences, and moralvirtues.

But our understanding of each of these points must be thoroughlymodified by the most characteristic premise of Tiantai thought of all,which determines the meaning we intend for the term “thoroughgoing” here: the idea of“self-recontextualization”, whereby the full expression ofany element of experience, indeed of any determinate entity at all,intrinsically entails its self-overcoming. This turn of thought may betermeddialectical, but in a way that differs from bothHegelian and Marxian notions of dialectics in that it is neitherteleologically progressive nor hierarchical. It has roots in 1)indigenous Chinese interest in the “reversals” observed inthe cycles of nature, conceptualized according to the naïveancient generalization that when anything is pushed its own extreme itwill “reverse”, that an increase in a thing’s extension orintensity leads to its self-undermining (e,g., it keeps getting colderuntil it gets coldest, and then it starts getting warmer), and in 2)the sophisticated ruminations on the nature of conditionalitydeveloped in the Emptiness and Two Truths doctrines as expressed inIndian Buddhist logic. What this means is that “thoroughgoingcontextualism” will in Tiantaireverse into anassertion of the self-validation of every entity without exception,that “thoroughgoing holism” will in Tiantai self-reversealso into thoroughgoing individualism, “thoroughgoingmonism” also into thoroughgoing pluralism, “thoroughgoingimmanentism” also into thoroughgoing transcendentalism, alongwith a claim that these two extremes are, when fully thought through,actually synonyms for one another. It will mean that for all finiteconditional entities, exceptionless impermanence is seen to be alsoexceptionless eternalism, exceptionless anti-substantialism is seen tobe also exceptionless substantialism, exceptionless anti-realism isseen to be also exceptionless realism, again supplemented by a claimabout the interchangeability of these two seemingly opposedclaims. Similarly, thoroughgoing skepticism about all claims is seento be also a thoroughgoing “trivialism” (the claim thatall possible claims are true), thoroughgoing anti-realism also afanatically absolute realism even for the most fleeting appearances,thoroughgoing renunciation of finite aims, moral rules, moralconsequences and moral virtues is seen to be also an exceptionlessacceptance of all finite aims and the endorsement of all determinatemoral rules, consequences and virtues.

When the dust from these turnarounds settles, Tiantai ends up witha unique view of the structure of reality: every event, function orcharacteristic occurring in any experience anywhere is the action ofall sentient and insentient beings working together. Every instant ofexperience is the whole of reality manifesting in this particularform,as this particular entity or experience. Each suchinstant is however no mere accidental, dispensable form; rather, it isitself unconditional and ineradicable, is eternal and omnipresent.Moreover, this “whole of reality” is irreducibly multipleand irreducibly unified at once, in the following way: all possibleconflicting, contrasted and axiologically varied aspects areirrevocably present—in the sense of“findable”—in and as each of these individualdeterminate totality-effects. Good and evil, delusion andenlightenment, Buddhahood and deviltry, are all “inherentlyentailed” in each and every event. These multiple entities arenot “simply located” even virtually or conceptually: the“whole” which is the agent performing every experience isnot a collection of these various “inherently entailed”entities or qualities arrayed side by side, like coins in a pocket.Rather, they are “intersubsumptive”. That is, any one ofthem subsumes all the others, and yet, because of the view of what“subsumption” actually is, each is subsumed by each of theothers as well: all relation is subsumption, and all subsumption isintersubsumption. Each part is the whole, each quality subsumes allother qualities, and yet none are ever eradicable. A Buddha in theworld makes the world all Buddha, saturated in every locus with thequality “Buddhahood”; a devil in the world makes the worldall devil, permeated with “deviltry”. Both Buddha anddevil are always in the world. So every event in the world is alwaysbothentirely Buddhahood andentirelydeviltry. Every moment of experience is always completely delusion,evil and pain, through and through, and also completely enlightenment,goodness and joy, through and through.

Traditional Buddhism gives a rather commonsensical account ofsentient experience: every moment of sentient experience is a sensoryapparatus encountering an object, giving rise thereby to a particularmoment of contentful awareness. But in the Tiantai view, each of thesethree—sense organ, object, this moment of consciousness—isitself the Absolute, the entirety of reality, expressed withoutremainder in the peculiar temporary form of sense organ, of object, ofthis consciousness. Hence each moment of every being’s experience isredescribed, to paraphrase a canonical early Tiantai work, as follows:

The absolute totality encounters the absolutetotality, and the result is the arising of the absolutetotality. (法界對法界起法界)

The Absolute, the whole of reality, is one andeternal, always the same and omnipresent, but it is also the kind ofwhole that divides from itself, encounters itself, arises anew eachmoment, engenders itselfas the transient flux of each uniqueand individual moment of experience of every sentient being.

How this view is established, and what its consequences are, iswhat is to be explained in this article.

1. The Three Truths: Emptiness, Provisional Positing and the Center (空假中kong, jia, zhong)

The meta-level claim about self-recontextualization asself-reversal, which applies at all levels to all Tiantai doctrines,is itself the consequence of some considerations concerningcontextualism, holism and conditionality, with which it is thusconvenient to begin our exposition. The heart of the matter, the mostfundamental and far-reaching renovation of Buddhism accomplished bythe Tiantai School, is the move from theTwo Truths model toaThree Truths one. The Two Truths is an epistemological andpedagogical heuristic in most Mahāyāna Buddhism, but in Tiantai theThree Truths are taken to be a necessary logical entailment of anyproposed determinacy, and thus to apply equally to any possibleontological, epistemological and ethical entities. They can besummarized by the claim that no entity can be either the same as ordifferent from any other entity. This relation ofneither-sameness-nor-difference is the “asness” relation:each determinate thing is the totality of all other possiblethingsas this thing. The non-sameness implies that thespecific characteristics of all other things are in some sensediscoverable in each thing, that all their manifold properties andfunctions will also be simultaneously operative there.

1.1 Outline of the Three Truths Argument: Getting to “Neither-Same-Nor-Different”

We can reconstruct the argument for this claim as follows:

For anything to be what it is, it must be mutually exclusive withwhatever it is not. If it has aspects or qualities in common withanything else, it is nonetheless stipulated to be specifically itselfnot insofar as it has these in common, and thus is indistinguishablefrom the other things that share them, but insofar as it is differentfrom them.
To be is to be determinate. To be determinate is to be finite,non-all. To be finite is to be conditional. Anything strictlyunconditional wouldipso facto be omnipresent (no particularplace rather than another can be the “condition” for itsexistence) and always occurring (no particular time rather thananother can be the “condition” for its existence), andthus indistinguishable from anything else. This would be equivalent tonot being determinate at all, for it would be impossible for anunconditional entity to be mutually exclusive with anything, sincethat exclusion would then have to be a “condition” of itsexistence.
Any entity must thus be copresent with some otherness; it mustexist in a world that includes something that is not it, i.e., (byitem #1), something that is mutually exclusive with it (even if justthe empty space around it). Some form of copresence-with-otherness isanessential characteristic of the existence of allentities. All forms of relation, including relations of causality andof conceptual contrast, are instances of this necessarycopresence-in-the-world.
The conditions from which it must be different but relatedinclude not only immediately contiguous causally efficient factors,but also prior states of affairs. More searchingly, the constitutivecopresent otherness cannot be to non-X in general, for thiswould merely be a repetition of the determination ofX itself,in reverse; to the extent that there is no more in non-X thanthe negation ofX, no new content is provided by the contrast,which therefore presupposesX. Rather, the exclusions that makeup the determination ofX must be specific otherdeterminations, other exclusions; they must in principle includeanything at all that the entity in question is different from: to bedeterminate asX is a specific exclusion of all specificnon-X things and states. We have greater knowledge of what theessence of a dog is by learning more about each and every particularthing that the dog is not, how it differs specifically from a cat,from a hedgehog, from a table, from a towel…. (Our knowledge isthus always constitutively partial and in-process; knowingX isalways being poised to know more aboutX. Knowledgeperse is non-omniscience.)
However, all copresence-in-the-world, all conditioning, allrelation, all causality between two entities requires some overlap orinterface between them. There must be some place, thing, time, mediumor concept that simultaneously includes them both, or which they bothinclude. Any two entities must have something in common to succeed inbeing copresent—to have a causal relation or to even becontrasted.
But no genuinely distinct entities, insofar as they are distinctand thus determinate, have anything in common.
Hence two genuinely mutually exclusive entities can have norelation of conditioning one another.
Hence there are no genuinely mutually exclusive entities. Thusthe nature of determination stipulated in item #1 must besupplemented. This rewrite of the nature of determination is the ThreeTruths.
Whatever appears to be, i.e., to be just what it is and nothingelse, cannot really be mutually exclusive with whatever it isnot.X is “non-different” from non-X. Thisnon-difference is called the Emptiness(空kong,Śūnyatā) ofX. ForifX is non-different from non-X, it fails to fulfillthe condition of beingX stipulated in item #1, andthusXis notX;X is“empty”.
ButX is also “non-same” withnon-X. Empirically, if it were the same, there would benoX to be called non-different: its presence is nothing otherthan its non-identity with all other states. Logically, thealternative to the Tiantai view is the default bivalent assumptionthat either some entities exist or that no entities exist; but bothexisting and non-existing require non-sameness—i.e., thenon-sameness between existing and non-existing. Anything determinateis non-same with what is not itself, by item #1. This is why there issomething rather than nothing: even total nothingness would still bedeterminate and non-same to what it is not, i.e., non-same tosomethingness. Nothing would therefore still be something, so thequestion why there is something rather than nothing is actuallymoot. Non-sameness to what it is not is analytically necessary to anyproposed entity. Even if no entity is posited,“no-entity-being-posited” will not obtain unless thepositing of entities is thereby excluded, and non-sameness isnecessary to succeed in excluding the positing of any entity. This isnon-sameness to non-X is called the Provisional Positing orConventional Truth (假jia) ofX.
The non-sameness ofX and non-X and thenon-difference betweenX and non-X are themselvesnon-same as one another and non-different from one another. Non-samein spite of being non-different is Provisional Positing. Non-differentin spite of being non-same is Emptiness. These are just reversed waysof saying the same thing, but the reversal is itself notnegligible. They are two opposite and mutually exclusive senses givento a single identical referent. They are synonymous and yetcontrasted. This is called the Center (中zhong).
X has to be an aspect or part of more than whatever itseems to be, and even as a part or aspect it cannot really be just thesingle selfsame (i.e., simply and bivalently same or different) partor aspect it appears to be.
But it also does and must seem to be just this and nothingbesides, and can appear only if initially appearing to be mutuallyexclusive with what it is not: to appear is to appear as something,which is to appear as finite. The whole of which any appearance is apart or aspect can never appearsimpliciter, even inthought. It is always appearing as one specific thing (or concept, orthought) or another.
To be present asX is to not beX, but such thatthis not-X is showing itself only asX. To beXis to exclude non-X but only in such a way as to necessarilyinvolve non-X, which can only be done by showing itselfexclusively asX.
Thus the Three Truths are:
1. Provisional Positing: SomeX is always appearing.
2. Emptiness:X is not (only)X.
3. The Center (or Middle, or Mean): The simultaneity, inseparability, sameness-as-difference ofX appearing andX not being onlyX (this is the Center in its simplest formulation, as “the exclusive Center” (但中danzhong) which is itself neither Emptiness nor Provisional Positing, is beyond both and more ultimately real than both, but which can appear as either).
A further implication of the Center, called the“Non-exclusive Center” (不但中budanzhong): Any two putatively distinct things,YandX, are also not-same-and-not differentfrom oneanother. For the Center can never appearsimpliciter; italways appears as some specific coherence showing itself, to which itis non-different. Provisional Positing is intrinsic to every instanceof both Emptiness and the Center, and Provisional Positing is alwayssome specific provisional posit (even the abstract concept“provisional positing”, or the abstract concept“emptiness” or “the center” is stillaspecific provisional posit.) Each provisional positinvolves every other provisional posit, specifically.Y is aninstantiation ofX.X is an instantiationofY. All other appearances are thus“intersubsumptive” withX. The Center is thusultimately not beyond or more real than Emptiness or ProvisionalPositing, but is itself synonymous-as-contrasted with them, such thatjust to be Empty or to Provisionally Posited, or to be any provisionalposit, is to be the Center, the subsumer and subsumed of all otherprovisional posits—and vice versa.

1.2 The Self-Overcoming of Holism into Omnireductionism

From this we can perhaps see in what way Tiantai is able tostipulate at once the self-preserving and the self-overcoming of bothholism and apophasis. First, atomism of any kind is rejected asunintelligible, and a thorough contextualism asserted: things can onlybe determinate in relation to a context, and there can be nonon-arbitrary limiting of the extent and multiplicity of contexts,since each context will itself be intelligible only with respect to alarger context. This would seem to lead to a holism of some sort: eachapparently isolable thing is really an aspect or expression of somemore inclusive whole, and each of these finite wholes must be anaspect or expression of a still more inclusive whole. The part isdependent on the whole, the conditional is dependent on theunconditional. But the unconditional can have no specific separateidentity, not even as “the unconditionalperse”. Any determination for the whole turns out toself-overturn into other determinations, precisely due to its successin being a determination for the exceptionless whole. For example,Thales says the world is made of water. This is stipulated after firstisolating other lesser wholes: water, earth, fire, air. Each of thesewas already a finite whole, involving an alleged collapse fromappearance to a deeper reality: what appeared to be trees and stonesand pillars turned out to be part of the larger whole“earth”, ways in which earth appears or manifests; whatappeared to be body-heat and flames and sunshine turned out to be partof the larger whole “fire”, ways in which fire appears ormanifests. Now Thales says both of these are really parts of a largerwhole “water”, ways in which it appears and manifests. Buteach of these generalizing claims involves ameaning-changefor the term in question. “Water” initially meant“what isnot fire, earth, wind, which excludes them,what is contrasted to them”. After Thales, “water”means also “what expresses itself sometimes as watery, sometimesas fiery, sometimes as earthy, sometimes as windy”. Along comesHeraclitus and claims that all is really“fire”. “Fire” now means also “whatexpresses itself sometimes as watery, sometimes as fiery, sometimes asearthy, sometimes as windy”. What is intended in claims of thistype, allowing them to appear to be doing explanatory work, is themaintenance of a distinction between which of these expressions isprimary and which secondary, which direct and indirect; but Tiantaiwould deny that this distinction can be meaningfully maintained oncethis totalization has been effected. Because each now means thewhole, they lose their original meaning, for that meaning was entirelydependent on a contrast to what was excluded. If fire is everything,then fire is not fire. If water is everything, then water is notwater. If fire is everything, then water is really fire. If water iseverything, then fire is really water. If fire is really water, thenwater is really fire. Hence by going through the universalizationofany determinate entity, we reach the overturning of thatdetermination into something that expresses itself as all otherdeterminations, and at the same time undermines its own privilegedstatus as ultimate foundation, making all other possibledeterminations equally unconditional, all-pervasive, universal,absolute. To see the absoluteness of any one entity is thus tode-absolutize that entity and also to absolutize every otherentity.

1.3 From Two Truths to Three Truths: The Self-Overcoming of Apophasis into Trivialism

The Three Truths position of Tiantai derives from a particularunderstanding of the Two Truths doctrine advanced by Indian Buddhistphilosophers of the Mādhyamaka school, interpreted as holding that anyspecific thing we could say about the world was at best a“Conventional Truth”, which served as a kind of“raft” to get beyond it to the “UltimateTruth” of Emptiness—determinations of any kind were thusat best an indispensible means to get beyond themselves, to bediscarded when their work is done. The stipulation of Emptiness(Śūnyatā) was itself a raft to get beyond not only all otherdeterminate views but also Emptiness itself as a “view” ortheory or concept. Ultimate Truth, true realization of Emptiness, wasthus at best a celebratory term used to point to an ineffableexperience of the liberation from all views, all definite conceptionsof determinate “things”. The motivation for this wassoteriological in a specific, pan-Buddhist sense: the goal of allhuman endeavor, including philosophy, including ethics, includingepistemology, is assumed to be the reduction or elimination ofsuffering. Buddhism claims that this is what we’re always trying todo, but usually in a self-defeating, ignorant way; it claims toprovide a more effective way. Note that this does not make any claimabout what is valuable, but rather addresses what is assumed to be anecessary entailment of what it means to consider anything valuable,i.e., what structures desire qua desire. To desire is to value, andsuffering is simply the non-satisfaction of our desire. Hence allendeavors are endeavors to eliminate some suffering, i.e., to satisfya desire. The characteristic Buddhist contribution is then to notethat desiring any conditional object or state is necessarilyself-defeating. This is because to be conditional is to be broughtinto being by a qualitatively distinct, heterogeneous and extrinsiccause. But examined closely, this cannot be asingleextrinsic cause, for if any effect were produced by a single cause,that cause and that effect would always be copresent—whereverand whenever that cause occurred, the effect would also occur. Butthat would mean that the cause would therefore no longer be extrinsicto the effect; they would be, rather, necessary and intrinsicallyconjoined, actually two aspects of a single irreducible entity, whichwould mean that no causal event actually ever occurs. This means thatall conditional things require multiple causes, each of which itselfrequires multiple causes.

This introduces an intrinsic instability and inner conflict intowhatever exists conditionally, that is, whatever is finite, whateveris determinate. The unconditional would have to be omnipresent andomnitemporal and indeterminate. But the nature of desire is to havespecific conditions of satisfaction: to desire is to require some onestate of affairsrather than,to the exclusion of,some other state of affairs—minimally, pleasureinstead ofpain. This means all desire qua desire is desire for somethingconditional; otherwise there would be no need for the desire, sincethe desired state would already always and everywhere bepresent. Desire desires a single effect to the exclusion of any othereffect; but the denial of effectivity for any singlecausealso implies that what is produced by any causal process can never beonly a singleeffect. For since what is produced is notdependent solely on any single cause, or indeed any finite set ofcauses considered as a unit, the production of a new event alwaysrequires the conjunction with some hitherto excluded condition. Sinceby hypothesis this new condition is not a consistent part of theoriginal set, it will not always be the same, and thus the effect willnot be one and the same; every conjunction will produce its owneffects, and by hypothesis there is no limit to the set ofconjunctions (for that would make them simply a single cause). Lessrigorously, it is held that the cross-purposes and conflictingtendencies thus built into any effect make it impossible for it to bea stably homogenous entity consistently isolable from the oppositeconditional states it means to exclude, such as is required by theexclusive structure of specific desires. Whatever is desired must beidentifiably present at a particular time and place, and whatever issuch is conditional, and whatever is conditional entails impermanence,and thus suffering.

The pan-Buddhist denial of the existence of a “self”rests on the same point: the impossibility of single-cause causalevents. For the “self” rejected here is precisely theclaimant to single-causality: the agent of actions which putativelyrequires no second condition to produce an effect, e.g., to willsomething, to do something, to want something, to experiencesomething. The self never acts alone, has no independent effects, andthus actually is not a self-as-efficacious-agent. “Self”here essentially means “controller”. Because there is nosingle causality, there is no single controller, and thus no self. Forthis reason too, satisfaction of desire is not sustainable. For indoing what the self desires, other causes besides the activity of theself are always also involved; the effect is not in the self’scontrol, and thus will inevitably contravene its desires, its owncausal contributions to the effect. Indeed, the early Buddhistanalysis of the human condition amounts to the claim that all desireis really a proxy-version of this impossible desire for control, forsingle-agent causality, for pure autonomy, for selfhood; thus alldesire is doomed.

The same considerations have serious epistemological consequencesas well. The Buddhists viewed theoretical stances and philosophicalpositions as themselves objects of desire, of clinging. Since all suchstances are themselves specific, determinate, they areipsofacto conditional. As conditional, they areipso factosuffering. Hence attachment to views was seen as a form of sufferingand an obstacle to liberation. All determinate metaphysical viewsabout how or what things are were to be transcended and leftbehind.

In most of the dominant Indian theories, those ideas are grantedtemporary validity as conventional truths: they are to serve as“rafts”, to be clung to temporarily, but only because theyare an effective means of passing beyond themselves. This includesboth specific Buddhist doctrines and also ordinary conventional speech(necessary for even communicating Buddhist ideas). Whatever ideas donot lead to their own abandonment in this way (and hence do not leadto the end of suffering) do not count even as conventionaltruths—for example, 1) metaphysical and religious theories aboutthe Absolute, or unconditional claims about the world as a whole and2) non-conventional views of things in the world, claims thatcontravene ordinary language of the community. There tends to be akind of hierarchy in the Indian Two Truths theory: first, plainfalsehood, including all philosophical theories about reality andunconventional views. Then conventional truth, which includes ordinarydaily life ideas about self and other, cause and effect and so on, andalso Buddhist ideas about suffering, the Four Noble Truths, non-self,and even “Emptiness” considered as a concept. These ideaslead beyond themselves, instrumentally, to the experience ofEmptiness, which is liberation from all views. The conventional truthshad an instrumental value, but none were really “true”about things—Emptiness meant that all of them were, in the mostultimate sense, false. Also, there are really only one or two kinds ofconventional truth: first, common sense daily speech, the correctgeneral names for things as used in the daily life of your particularcommunity, and second, Buddhist ideas. The reason these count as“truths” is because they are useful in leading us toliberation from suffering—and in leading us to liberation fromthese ideas themselves. “True” propositions arepropositions that have the power to lead beyond themselves.

This led to a somewhat paradoxical situation, on severallevels. There was always a problem in Emptiness theory: Emptiness wassupposed to be not a “view” at all, to predicate nothingabout reality. But if itdoes anything at all, ifitnegates or excludes any other view, it is, in the Tiantaiview, still a kind of view. For to be something in particular is justto excludesomething else in particular. That is all a“thing” is, that is all a “view” is. To besomething justis to exclude something else; nothing more isrequired to count as a being. Pre-Tiantai Emptiness theory gets intoan infinite regress, chasing its tail around the problem of thetranscendence of Emptiness: no statement can represent it, even“all things are Empty”. It is purely and totally above andbeyond anything that can be thought or said, all ordinary experienceof identities in the world. It is a negation that is supposed to bearno relation at all to what it negates, to entirely escape the systemof relations, of conditionality. Emptiness is supposed to be strictly“inconceivable”. In Tiantai, this problemdisappears. Emptiness is still very important, but it is simplyaconditional assertion of unconditionality. We do not haveall the conditionality (specifiability, particularity) on one side andall the unconditionality (transcendence, inconceivability) on theother. Everything, every experience, every identity, every action, isin the same boat: they are allboth conditional and unconditional,both conceivable and inconceivable. The thought, experience,concept “Emptiness” is also both conditional andunconditional, both conceivable and inconceivable, like“water” and “fire” in our exampleabout. Emptiness is an especially efficient marker of self-explodedholism, the term that applies most easily everywhere and thusultimately nowhere, allowing all other terms to do the same. It isProvisionally Posited, which means it is at least locally coherent(conditional, determinate, conceivable), but it itself is also Empty,which means it is globally incoherent (unconditional, indeterminate,inconceivable). It appears in experience as something in particular(locally coherent as precisely this word and this thought“Emptiness”), but this, like every other local coherence,is haunted by its own inseparable nimbus of infinite outsides,infinite contexts, each of which differently contextualizes it andthus bestows on it alternate identities: there is more to it than anysingle concept, including the concept “Emptiness”, canhold. Emptiness is, to use a word coined for just this Tiantai usage,“moretitivity”: and moretotivity is itself moretoitive. Itappears not just as moretoitivity, but as specific identities,something more, above and beyond, simple moretoitivity as such.Ambiguity is itself ambiguous: fire is not just fire, it is ambiguous;but the ambiguity is not just ambiguity, it is also fire. This appliesto everything else as well. Local coherence and global coherence(Provisional Positing and Emptiness) are just two ways of saying thesame thing.

In the Tiantai “Three Truths” theory, instead ofconcluding that every particular view and thing is false, we concludethat all is, ultimately, true. Every possible view is equally a truth.There is no longer a hierarchy between the levels, and no category ofplain falsehood. “Conventional Truth” in Tiantai is notsomething to be left behind when we reach enlightenment, but ratherwhat is obtained and mastered and intensified there. Moreover,nothing is left out of it—all possible statements, viewpoints,ideas, concepts, positions are conventional truths. The criterion isstill the same: all things can be used as “skillful means”to lead to Buddhahood. So now we have Three Truths, which are not araft-like instrument to get beyond all statements and concepts, and afinal higher truth that allows us to have no biased and particularview of things, but rather as three true ways of viewing anyparticular thing. It is not a raft to get beyond all rafts, but a raftthat leads to the raft factory that makes and houses all rafts, andallows one to move at will from any raft to any other raft, includingthe initial one. However you may be viewing a particular part of theworld or the world as a whole, it is “conventionally”true. There are not just a few conventional truths, but an infinitenumber of them, even when they are directly opposed andcontradictory. So in Two Truths theory, we would say that “thisis a cup” is conventionally true, and “this cup isempty” is a higher conventional truth, which finally leads us toa direct inconceivable experience of the emptiness of this cup,freedom from clinging to any view at all of this cup, which is theliberation from all suffering. If someone were to point to this“cup” and say, “This is an elephant”, however,that would not even be a conventional truth, because that is not howmost people think of it, it is neither the ordinary speech of thelanguage community, nor a Buddhist term designed to lead beyonditself. That would be a plain error. And if someone said, “Thisis an expression of the will of God”, that would also be anerror, not even a conventional truth, since it tried to make a claimbeyond that of conventional usage to an ultimate, universallyapplicable, absolute truth. But in Tiantai Three Truths theory, it isjust as true to say, “This is an elephant” or “Thisis the Will of Baal” as to say “This is a cup”. Andneither of these is less true than saying, “This isempty”, or indeed any less true than “experiencing”the emptiness of this cup/elephant. In both cases, what we have isalocally coherent way of viewing this thing—it justmeans that itlooks that way from some perspective, withinsome set of parameters, for some length of time. It doesn’t matteranymore whether those parameters are shared by the common sense of aparticular community or speech group; all that matters is that it ispossible to make it look that way, that it looks that wayfromanywhere, foreven one moment. In Two Truths andEmptiness theory, nothing is really true. In Tiantai Three Truthstheory,everything is true. We don’t need an extra“Emptiness” outside of this locally coherent way of seeingthings; Emptiness just means that whatever islocallycoherent is also,ipsofacto,globallyincoherent. That is, when allfactors are taken into consideration, the original way any thingappears is no longer unambiguously present, but it restored as a raftleading to all other rafts, including itself, as ineradicable aspectsof all reality, of any reality.

2. Contextualism and Ontological Ambiguity

A simple thought experiment may draw out the implications of thisidea. Imagine that you come upon what looks like a white marble lyingon the ground. You experience it as round, as small, as white, andimmediately you construct a lived attitude toward it—somethingthat can be picked up, rolled, played with, pocketed. But then you goto pick it up, and find that it is stuck to the ground. You cannotlift it. You try to dig it out, and find that it extends downward,further than you can dig: it is the tip of a larger item. It appearsto be a long rod or cylindrical pipe of some kind. But as you digfurther, you find that after about five inches of narrow thinness itstarts to expand outward; it is a spire on top of a cone. This coneexpands outward as you keep digging down. When you get about twentyfeet down, the cone ends, embedded in a soft, scaly material. Thenthe earth rumbles and an enormous two-horned monster emerges fromunderground; it is 500 feet tall, and each of its horns is twenty feethigh, with a long sharp tip. You had been digging out one of thehorns. What you had seen as a marble on the ground was in fact thevery tip of one of the horns. Now look again at that tip. You hadexperienced it as round. But it turns out it was not round at all: itis sharp. Yet it has not changed at all: you are still seeing what yousaw. It is not white either: the tip had looked white against theground, but now, looking at the monster’s horn as whole, you see it asa pattern of mostly green spots interspersed here and there withwhite: looked at as a whole, the horn, including its tip, looksgreen. Nor is it movable, pocketable, playwithable—it is ratherdangerous, razor sharp, to be avoided. And yet nothing of what you sawwas taken away: it was just supplemented with further information,with its larger context.

Tiantai views all things this way. Normally you might make somequalifications in order to preserve your view that some facts areunambiguous (indeed, to some extent this process is precisely whatphilosophy traditionallyis); you might say “thetip,considered in isolation, is indeed round”. Theusual procedure is to interpose the distinction between “how itappears” and “how it really is”, some form ofreality-appearance distinction. But the most important consequence ofthe transformation of the Two Truths into the Three Truths is thewholesale dismissal of the appearance-reality distinction. Tiantaiwould reject the privileging of either considering in isolation orconsidering in any single particular connection; any of these would belegitimate in some heuristic (upayic) contexts, but nonecould be non-arbitrarily assigned the role of representing what is the“really the case”,simpliciter. To see somethingis to see “not-all” of it. We are always seeing a littlefragment of the world, but every bit of the world is changed by thefact that it is a part of the world, is recontextualized by the restof the world, by the rest of space and the rest of time. In fact, ifwe ever saw all, we would see nothing. For to see, to take somethingas “there”, as “real”, is to place it within acontext, to contrast it to something outside of itself, somethingwhich is not it. To see all is to see nothing. As in the case of“fire” and “water” above, if someone were tosay that the entire universe is “round”, this wouldrequire changing the meaning of “round”. This round wouldnot be round: for round requires a non-roundoutside it to beround. It would have to be bordered by something to shape it intoroundness, but the universe would also include thatoutside-the-roundness part. If someone were to say the entire universewere sharp, this would also make no sense. This sharp would not besharp; for sharp requires a non-sharpoutside it to besharp. To say the whole universe is sharp, then, means no more and noless than saying the whole universe is round. We can make no specificdeterminations about the whole, about the entire universe, for thatoutside of which nothing exists; for all particular specificationsrequire a contrast to something outside of them. Everything we can sayor think comes from the realm of the finite, and cannot be applied tothe infinite. But the Tiantai point is that we cannot speak ofanything finite without also involving some determination of theWhole, of the infinite. If we were to say this thing is sharp, wewould have to be assuming that “the whole universe is such thatthis thing is sharp”. We cannot say that: the whole universecannot be “such that this marble is sharp” any more thanthe whole universe can be “sharp”. But this also means wecannot say the whole universe is “such that this marble isnot-sharp”. Either is equally legitimate, either is equallyillegitimate. What we can say, then, is that this marble appears to beround, but round is such that it is always turning out also to be morethan round, to be non-round, and vice versa. Roundness ismoretoitive. Round and non-round intersubsume each other.

In short, roundness is present as everynon-roundness, and as moretoitivity; moretoitivity is present asroundness, and as every non-roundness.

To clarify this, consider the following:

What is the following figure?

What is that “same” figure in the diagram below?

−2 −1 Ο 1 2

What is it now?

		M
		N
−2	−1	Ο	1	2
		P
		Q

How about now:

				Ο
		M
		N
−2	−1	Ο	1	2	Ο
		P
		Q

When we looked at that round figure in isolation, it may havepresented itself immediately and unreflectively in accordance with ourhabits or proximate mental acts; if we had been thinking about numbersa moment ago, it might appear simply and unambiguously as“zero”, if about letters as the letter “o”, ifabout shapes as a “circle”. When a single explicit contextwas added in the second diagram, it had a clear and definite identity:it was the number zero. But when we added another context at the sametime, in the third diagram, the figure became ambiguous: it could nowbe read as either a zero or the letter O. As we keep adding morecontexts, its identity becomes more and more ambiguous; in the finaldiagram above, we can point to the initial circular figure and say,validly, “This is a triangle”—for it is thevertex of a triangle formed with the two other, non-contiguous andnon-proximate, circles. Who knows what other circles there are out inthe world, and what other figuresthis thing right here isactually forming? When we consider all things in the universe at thesame time, the initial identities we assigned to them are supplementedby more and more ambiguity. Looking at just the single series ofletters, is was a zero: this is local coherence. When we see this cupsimply as a cup, we are doing the same thing: ignoring a lot of otherfactors, contexts, points of view, ways of viewing, and narrowing downthe relevant factors to allow it to appear as a single unambiguoussomething: a cup. If we consider the molecules of which it is made, orthe energy it expresses, or the uses to which it might be put in thecontext of various narratives, or its deep past and deep future, its“cupness” becomes ambiguous: it is simultaneously lots ofother things, part of many different stories. It is a blip on thescreen of energy transformations, or a murder weapon, or an artobject, or a doorstop. The same is true of yourself, and your actionsright now. They are unambiguous only to the extent that we narrow ourvision around them (one way we can narrow our vision, of course, is todo philosophy; one of the narratives in which we are contextualizingour experience might be a conceptual system presupposing the sortingout of essences, attributes, accidents, substantial forms or what haveyou, and distinguishing appearances from reality accordingly, so thatit appears to be “essentially” a cup and only“accidentally” a murder weapon and only “appearingto be” a revelation from Baal). This is the meaning of Emptinessin Tiantai: ontological ambiguity. The term “ambiguity”usually refers only to how we see things. We assume that, inthemselves, everything simply is what it is; but we may have anunclear view of it; we can’tyet tell if it’s this orthat. We assume that, at least in principle, it must be one or theother. The idea of Emptiness is the idea that this is true“ontologically”: that is, it pertains to the very being ofthings. To say they are empty does not mean they are a blank—forthat would be a definite something, a specific exclusion of alldeterminate content, which is,ipso facto, itself adeterminate content. Emptiness here means rather that they are, inthemselves,ambiguous. Again, this is also to say thateverything ismore than it seems to be, or ratherconstitutively more than itcan seem to be, no matter whatangles it is seen from, no matter how thoroughly it is known, nomatter how comprehensive a sum of information is gathered about it. Ithas the character of being a “something” (a cup, a chair,an elephant), with a number of specifiable characteristics, but every“something”, just to be there as something, has theadditional characteristic of “moretoitivity”—ofalways overflowing whatever is determined about it, ofbeingmore than what can be seen from any angle.

This “more” however, does not leave the original“known” part unchanged. Rather, it recontextualizes it. Weare always seeing the tip of an iceberg. But even the“tip” is no longer what we thought it was before we knewit was a tipof something more. The key here is that there isno total decontextualization, that leaving one context is alwayssimply entering another context; contextual relations do not requirephysical contiguity, and the empty space surrounding a given thingdoes not cut it off from further recontextualizations but rather isitself a context, and an illimitable one that opens into infinitealternate contexts.

3. Transformative Self-Recontextualization (開權顯實kaiquanxianshi)

This strange “neither-same-nor-different” structure ofthe Three Truths is to be understood in accordance with another keyTiantai concept, “opening the provisional to reveal thereal” (開權顯實kaiquanxianshi). This is a way of further specifying the relationbetween local coherence and global incoherence, which are not onlysynonymous, but also irrevocably opposed, and indeed identical only bymeans of their opposition and mutual exclusivity. Provisional truth isthe antecedent, the premise, and indeed in a distinctive sensethecause of ultimate truth, but only because it is thestrict exclusion of ultimate truth.

3.1 The Setup-Punchline Structure of Reality

This can be compared to the structure of the relation between theset up and the punch line of a certain kind of joke. Consider thefollowing:

(Setup): Two strangers were chatting on a bus. One told theother he was on his way to a biology lab downtown to pick up hisdog. “The scientists there are doing some research onhim”, he said. “He was born with no nose”.; “Really?” said the other. “How does he smell?”
(Punchline): “Awful”.

Let’s talk about that structure. When we hear the question“How does he smell?” it seems as if it is a serious query,an expression of serious curiosity about canine anatomy and itsmutations. It has the quality of seriousness, of factuality, ofnon-ironic information. There is nothing funny about that statement.But, when the punch line comes, retrospectively, that set up is funny.That set up is funny because it has been recontextualized by the punon the word “smell”, which is made to have more than oneidentity when put into a new context.

The interesting thing to note here is that it is preciselybynot being funny that the setup was funny. In other words,if it was already funny, if you didn’t take it seriously for a second,the contrast between the two different meanings of this thing couldnever have clashed in the way that is necessary to make the laughter,to make it actually funny. We have a setup which is serious and apunch line which is funny, but when you look back at the setup fromthe vantage point of having heard the punchline, that setup is alsofunny. After all, we don’t say that just the punch line is funny. Wesay the whole joke is funny. The setup is funny in the mode of notbeing funny yet. It is only funny because it wasn’t funny. It is thesame thing in the Lotus Sutra and it is the same thing in lifereally. You’re Enlightened! That is what Mahāyāna Buddhism says,everyone is Enlightened! Everybody is a Buddha! But the way in whichyou are a Buddha is the way in which the setup of a joke is funny,i.e., bynot being a Buddha. By struggling toward buddhahood,toward something else, but by revisualizing or recontextualizing orexpanding awareness, which has been the preferred technique inBuddhism all along, those very things which are the details of dailylife, of the struggles to interact, to deal with conditions andsuffering and lack of control are not just a means to buddhahood. Theyare themselves buddhahood as the life of a sentient being.

The “provisional”, conventional truth, local coherence,is the set-up. The “ultimate truth”, Emptiness, globalincoherence, ontological ambiguity, is the punch line. What isimportant here is to preserveboth the contrast between thetwoand their ultimate identity in sharing the quality ofhumorousness which belongs to every atom of the joke considered as awhole, once the punch line has been revealed. The setup is serious,while the punchline is funny. The funniness of the punchline dependson the seriousness of the setup, and on the contrast and differencebetween the two. However, once the punchline has occurred, it is alsothe case that the setup is, retrospectively, funny. This also meansthat the original contrast between the two is both preserved andannulled: neither funniness nor seriousness means the same thing afterthe punchline dawns, for their original meanings depended on themutually exclusive nature of their defining contrast. Is the setupserious or funny? It is both: it is funnyas serious, andseriousas funny. Is the punchline serious or funny? It isboth, but in an interestingly different way. It is obviously funny,but is it also serious? Yes. Why? Because now that the setup hasoccurred, both “funny” and “serious” have adifferent meaning. Originally, we thought that “funny”meant “what I laugh at when I hear it” or something likethat, and “serious” meant “what gives me non-funnyinformation” or something similar. But now we see that“funny” can also mean: What I take to be serious, what I amnotlaughing about, what I am earnestly considering, or crying over, orbewailing even.

But this means also that “serious”means “what can turn out to be either funny orserious”. So both “funny” and “serious”now both mean “funny-and-serious, what can appear as both funnyand serious”. Each is now a center that subsumes of the other;they are intersubsumptive. As a consequence, the old pragmaticstandard of truth is applied more liberally here: all claims,statements and positions are true in the sense that allcan,if properly recontextualized, lead to liberation—which is tosay, to their own self-overcoming. Conversely, none will lead toliberation if not properly contextualized.

3.2 Tiantai Teachings about Teachings: “Impermanence” as bothOpposite andSynonym of “Permanence” (In Four Steps)

This contextualism is applied intricately and thoroughgoingly toBuddhist teachings themselves, including especially its mostfoundational teachings about the basic character of existence:impermanence, suffering, and non-self--and also about the solutions tothose conditions: enlightenment and Buddhahood. Are allthings permament or impermanent? Are there selves or noselves? Can we end suffering or can’t we? ForTiantai the right question to be asked for understanding and applyingdoctrine is not “is it true?”—since all doctrines are“true” in this sense of “liberating” in somecontexts, and not in others--but rather “in what sense, and inwhat context, is it true, i.e., liberating?” It is inthis connection that we must understand the Tiantai“classification of teachings.” Among the manyrubrics used for this purpose in traditional Tiantai, the mostphilosophically important is the classification of the four types ofcontents of the Buddha’s teaching(化法四教), called the Four Teachings, namely,Tripitaka, Shared, Separate, and Perfect藏，通，別，圓).

These four types of content are viewed by Tiantai thinkers not asfour different teachings, but as really increasingly subtleexplications of one and the same content, the basic Buddhist teaching,via more and more expansive recontextualizations. Tiantaiclassifies all the teachings found in the Mahāyāna Buddhistscriptures into these four general types, according to the degree towhich they have developed the understanding of the basic Buddhistconcepts of universal conditionality, i.e., of Impermanence, Suffering,and Non-Self. It should be noted again that all fourof these types are regarded as “true teachings” of theBuddha—true in the sense of validly propounded as a way ofliberating sentient beings from suffering in some particularcontext—and that all are equally alsonot considereduniquely true descriptions of reality. Moreover,in keeping with the general Tiantai approach to interpretation, theyare not reallydifferent teachings at all: they are viewed asalternate expositions of the same idea as it is recontextualized, tovarying degrees of thoroughness as appropriate, even though—as weshall see—they appearprima facie to be in directcontradiction to one another. As such, this schema providesus with a strong general model of the Tiantai conception of theself-overcoming of suffering, impermanence and non-self, wherein theyare overcome by remaining exactly as they were, indeed even more so,and thereby are revealed to also be their own opposites.

Zhiyi takes an obscure passage from a Chinese translation oftheMahāyānaMahāparinirvānaSūtra as one of his models for these four expositions.

Literally, the passage reads as follows:

(Reality) cannot be described in terms of thearising of what arises.
It cannot be described in terms of thenon-arising of what arises.
It cannot be described in terms of the arising of non-arising.
It cannot be described in terms of thenon-arising of non-arising.
It cannot be described in terms of arising ornon-arising [in any of these ways].
Yet under the right circumstances it can bevalidly described in terms of any of these.

The passage can be somewhat more venturesomely translated asfollows:

The generated generates: that cannot besaid.
The generated is ungenerated: that cannot besaid.
The ungenerated generates: that cannot besaid.
The ungenerated ungenerates: that cannot besaid.
It cannot be said that there is eithergeneration or the ungenerated in any of these ways.
Although all four of these cannot be said, yetany of themcan be said under the right circumstances [i.e.,none is literally or absolutely valid, but all are conventionallyvalid—i.e., pragmatically effective in leading toliberation—in certain situations].

生生不可說，生不生亦不可說，不生生亦不可說，不生不生亦不可說，生亦不可說，不生亦不可說，以有因緣故可得說

For Zhiyi this passage gives more than a standard Buddhist negationof the tetralemma followed by its provisional affirmation. Instead, he links these four positions to the following four generalcategories, each with its own distinct way of understanding the FourNoble Truths, and therefore its own way of understanding the nature ofall things, the nature of all conditional events, of both the arisingand perishing of suffering (i.e., of all ordinary experience), of bothsuffering and liberation from suffering, and of how they arerelated:

1. Tripitaka Teaching 藏教: “The GeneratedGenerates” 生生, or literally, “The arising ofwhat arises.”

The things described by the Four Noble Truths – i.e., all conditionalexperience of suffering as well as the experience of the Unconditionedwhich is liberation from suffering--actually arise and perish.(shengmiesidi 生滅四諦)

All things are empty in that they are impermanent, and vanishwithout remainder when analyzed and dissolved into their parts(“analytic emptiness”xikong析空).

2. Shared Teaching 通教：: The [Apparently]Generated [Actually] is Ungenerated 生不生, orliterally, “the non-arising of what arises.”

The things described by the Four Noble Truths--i,e., all conditionalexperiences of suffering as well as the experience of theUnconditioned which is liberation from suffering--do not arise [orperish]. (wushengsidi 無生四諦)

All things are empty in their very nature from the beginning (whetherliterally impermanent and dissolved into parts or not)(“emptiness embodied right in the thing,”tikong 體空).

3. Separate Teaching 別教: The [PreviouslyEstablished] Ungenerated Generates [Infinitely]不生生, or literally, “the arisings of whatdoes not arise”

The things described by the Four Noble Truths – i.e., allconditional experiences of suffering as well as the experience of theUnconditioned which is liberation from suffering--can be validlydescribed not only as “really” empty of any determinationsof their own and thus neither arising nor perishing, but also, becausethey are also aspects of the compassionate liberative work of abodhisattva, in an infinity of alternate ways. (wuliangsidi 無量四諦)

The previous characterizations of things as empty or as non-empty wereboth one-sided, as things are in reality neither empty nornon-empty. Rather, both Emptiness and all non-emptythings are manifestations “the Center,” atertiumquid which is beyond but also includes both theungenerated aspect and the generated aspect, at once both form andformless, the constant infinite productions of forms by the formless,formlessness present only as the infinity of forms. It is thecollapsing of emptiness and non-emptiness into something that isimmediately both: their unity, which is the real source of both: thisis the Buddha-nature as “Exclusive Center”danzhongfoxing 但中佛性,hidden beneath the two extremes, the inner kernel of all phenomena, astheir source and ultimate reality.

4. Perfect Teaching 圓教: The (infinite things generatedby the) Ungenerated (are also) Ungenerated不生不生, or literally, “thenon-arisings of the non-arising.”

The things described by the Four Noble Truths – i.e., allconditional experiences of suffering as well as the experience ofliberation from suffering--in all those infinite alternate forms, are[actually, in their very infinite production,] unmade and unbegun (andunfinishable). (wuzuosidi無作四諦)

Each thing is empty, non-empty, and the Center. Each thing is neitherempty, non-empty, nor the Center. Each thing is entirely and onlyempty. Each thing is entirely and only non-empty. Each thing isentirely and only the Center. Each thing subsumes all theothers. Each thing is subsumed by all the others. Each of the previoussentences in this paragraph are synonyms. Not only each thing: theaspect of emptiness itself is empty, non-empty, and Center, andconsidered purely on its own terms is not only the negation of allthings but also, when fully thought through, the positing of allthings (non-empty) and the identity of positing and negation(Center). The same is true for the aspect of non-emptiness, andCenter: each one alone is all three. This is the “Non-ExclusiveCenter.”budanzhong 不但中佛性 Becauseit is what a Buddha lives and realizes, it is also called “theBuddha-nature”. Each thing is the center of the universe, thesubstance of which all other things are attributes. Each is the sourcegenerating all things, but also inherently contains all things withinitself so that it generates nothing, and likewise being generated by,and contained by, any other thing. Each thing is readable equally asany other thing. Each thing is also the end toward which all otherthings tend, thetelos of all things. A more detailedexposition of these four positions, and their relation to each other,is given in the following supplementary document:

Four Teachings

3.3 Time and Facts

The Three Truths, then, are actually three different but mutuallyimplicative ways of looking at any object or state. Each implies theother two, and each is one way to describe thewhole of thatobject, including its other two aspects. To be established is to benegated. To be begun is to be constitutively incomplete; to bedeterminate is to be ambiguous, to be anything is to be more than thatthing. If it were not more—other—thanX, it wouldnot even beX. We may think about this in terms of the statusof a “fact”. Emerson says in his essay,“History” (1841):

Time dissipates to shining ether the solidangularity of facts. No anchor, no cable, no fences avail to keep afact a fact.

He meant that every historical fact registers“at a distance”, in other times and places, taking on therole of an ever-ramifying metaphor that applies to more and moreindividual cases, with more and more diverse and richimplications. With a few small modifications, this brings us close tothe Tiantai view: all we need to do is specify that “time”and “fact” are not really two different things, with theformer acting to ambiguate the solidity of the latter, but are inreality two sides of the same thing, two aspects of a single process,in fact are ultimately synonyms. Time is just the addition of otherfacts. New facts are just the presence of additional time. In theTiantai view these new facts are not imposed on the initial fact fromwithout, but are posited as the context which alone made it a fact inthe first place, made it determinate as just this fact.“Time” just means the self-positing of both itself andother facts by any fact. Time makes facts facts, and unmakes facts bymaking more facts, all of which are intrinsic to the first fact:history is the positing and transcending, the self-establishment andself-recontextualization of any given fact.

Put another way, let us stipulate that a fact—anydetermination about what is so—is something that is in principleknowable, and that knowability implies a subject-object relation, andtherefore a “distance” or separation, some space away fromthe fact-to-be-known. That means that a fact is only a fact if thereis something outside of it, another fact, another time, a place toview it from; it doesn’t count as a fact unless it can impact on someother site, unless it relates to some otherness. But that means thatits journey out beyond itself to otherness is intrinsic to its veryfacticity, and it is this journey out beyond itself that Emersondenotes with the word “time”. To be thus and so, a factmust be viewable from elsewhere, and elsewhere, whether in physical orin conceptual space, implies the illimitable positing of still otheralternate perspectives from which to be seen, facts to impact,viewpoints to interpret and metaphorically internalize the initialfact. Determinacy implies limit, limit implies space, space impliesinfinity of other spaces, of other perspectives, of othercontexts. For something to be a fact is for it to intrinsically positdistances from itself, and thus to be viewable otherwise.

Most simply, we can say that for Tiantai time itselfsimplyis the continual “opening of the provisional toreveal the real”: an unceasing process ofself-recontexualization where the past on the one hand remainsunchangeable and on the other is constantly changing with eachrecontextualization. A moment of time is a recontextualization of theall the past. This also implies that the Tiantai notion ofinterpervasion of past, present and future, and of the “inherentinclusion” of all entities in each, is very far from resultingin a static picture of the universe devoid of any genuinecreativity. For in Tiantai, each moment of time brings with it notonly a new set of actual occasions, but a new set of “eternalprinciples”—categorical obligations, eternal objects,laws, universals. Each moment is effectively the creation of a new Godwho determines anew the character of the rest of the universe and ofall the past and future.

A moment, to be a moment, must be surrounded by other moments, fromwhich it differs. “Now” must be different from“then”. But that means “now”mustrelate to “then”. The “then” ispart of the world of the “now”, against which it definesitself, to which it stands in necessary contrast. This contrast cannotbe either internal or external to the “now” and to the“then”. “Now” is really“now-then”, and “then” is really“then-now”. This is easy to understand if we consider thestate of the entire totality of being at momentM and atmomentM+1. The state of things atM is thought to havethe power to cause the arising of the state of thingsatM+1. But ifM is gone whenM+1 arrives, itcannot “reach”M+1 to do anything to it; it isalready gone, non-existent, and thus can do nothing. If the state ofthings atM continues to exist whenM+1 arrives,however, time has failed to move ahead, or we must admit thecoexistence of two alternate total states of being at the sametime. If the appearance ofM+1 does not necessitate thedisappearance ofM (which by our hypothesis possesses the powerto bring aboutM+1),M would then continue to generatepreciselyM+1 repeatedly forever. In either case, time wouldnot be possible, and no real entities could arise. Moments of time areneither same nor different; they are present as one another, the pastas present as future, the future as past and present, the present aspast and future. The past is not yet over—every moment of thepresent and future reveals more about the past and its infinitechanges, for they are non-different from it, though allowing it toappearas these new moments. The present neverbegins—however far back you look, you will always be able tofind all the characteristics of the present there, unchanged thoughappearingas some former moment. The present neverends—all future moments are further disclosures about thispresent moment of experience happening right now.

3.4 Self-Overcoming of the Whole into Any Upayic Part

We can say all things are impermanent, as in earlyBuddhism—but now we know this is just a situationallyattachment-undermining way of saying“impermanent-permanent”. We can say all things arepermanent—meaning “permanent-impermanent”. We cansay some things are permanent and others are impermanent—meaning“some-all are permanent-impermanent” and “all-someare impermanent-permanent”. But note too that this does not mean“permanent-impermanent” is the real truth, while“permanent” and “impermanent” are bothone-sided distortions. That would be what Tiantai critiques as the“exclusive Center”. Rather, just as“permanent” really means“impermanent-permanent”,“impermanent-permanent”really means“permanent”, orreally means“impermanent”. For impermanent-permanentappearsas permanence andas impermanence, and eachof these is the entirety, not a mere part, of the whole. To bepermanent is already to also be impermanent—there is no otherpermanence. To be impermanent is already to also bepermanent—there is no other impermanence. All is funny, all isserious, all is funny-serious. Each is a perfectly equal synonym forall three. Each is an equally adequate-inadequate description of thetruth.

The same applies in all other cases. We can say all issuffering—meaning “suffering-bliss”. We can say allis bliss—meaning “bliss-suffering”. We can say allis mind—meaning “mind-matter”. We can say all ismatter—meaning “matter-mind”. We can say there is aGod—meaning “God-Godless”. We can say there is noGod—meaning “Godless-God”. We can say all isillusion—meaning “illusion-reality”. We can say allis reality—meaning “reality-illusion”. We can saysome things are true and some things are false—meaning“some-all is true-false and all-some is false-true”. Wecan say there is historical progress—meaning“progress-stagnation”. We can say there is historicalstagnation—meaning “stagnation-progress”. We can saysociety is evil—meaning “evil-good”. We can saysociety is good—meaning “good-evil”. We can say weare sometimes happy and sometimes sad—meaning “we-everyoneare sometimes-always happy-sad and sometimes-alwayssad-happy”. And so on. How should we choose which will we say atany time? If all things are sayable in some sense, what should we sayright now? We should say whatever is most conducive to liberation fromsuffering, from one-sided attachments, in this particular situationand context.

4. The Ultimate Reality of All Appearances （諸法實相zhufashixiang ）

The same method underlies all of Tiantai’s shocking slogans, suchas the claim that “all moments are permanent”, as we haveseen, or “all appearances are the ultimate reality”, or“evil is ineradicable from the highest good,Buddhahood”. They mean what they say, of course: no moment everends, and however anything appears to anyone for however long is theultimate reality that all things emerge from, all things return to,that explains and supports and sustains all things. True enough. Theopposite would also be true. But these particular claims areemphasized in classical Tiantai writings to offset the more commonone-sided prejudices that tend the other way. Because the impermanenceof things and the illusoriness of appearances is stressed in the restof Buddhism, it is assumed that anyone getting to Tiantai will alreadybe aware of this side of reality, and indeed may be in danger ofclinging to it. So Tiantai asserts the opposite, which is equallytrue.

All appearances are the ultimate reality: how is that true?Normally, we believe that in some kind of appearance versus realitycontrast: “I thought that was a snake, but upon closerinspection it turned out to be a rope”. This is what most ofBuddhism also says: “I thought there was a self, but it turnedout to be a bunch of impermanent aggregates”. Or, “Ithought there was a world, but it turned out to be all mind, orBuddha-nature, or illusion”. Common sense assumes this too: therim of my glass looks oval, but in fact we know that,“really”, it is round—it’s just that we’re seeing itfrom an angle that foreshortens it. The rainbow is a mereappearance—when we go to touch it, we find nothing there. Butthe clouds and sunlight are real, they are what it really is, what itturns out to really be. Tiantai, however, makes the preposterous claimthat the oval and the circle are both true—in fact, both are theultimate reality, are findable in all things and at all times andplaces, are the Absolute. The rainbow and the cloudysunlight—both true, both absolutely true, both the Absolute. The“self” and the impermanent aggregates—both true,both absolutely true, both the Absolute. The snake and therope—both true, both absolutely true, both the Absolute. All isillusion. All is reality. Time is not an illusion. Time is theillusoriness of every possible thing. Time is a word that means“whatever you think is so is already not so”. What isreal? What you can go back to, look at again, check up on, verify,re-examine. But there is literallyno experience that you cango back to, so there is none that is real. What is illusion? Somethingthat turns out to be otherwise than it appears. There is no thing ofwhich this is not the case. The horn “appeared” to beround, but “turned out” to be “sharp”. Butboth roundness and sharpness are equally unreal, equally real. Each isdetermined by the context in which it is seen. Taking the unnameablewhole into account, they too are unnameable, neither sharp norround. Roundness and sharpness are two names for the same thing, whichis round, sharp, and neither round nor sharp, and both round andsharp.

4.1 Inherent Evil Ineradicable In Buddhahood and the Buddha-nature of Insentient Beings

The same goes for the famous Tiantai claim that “evil isinherently included in Buddhahod”. Future Buddhahood lives inpast delusion, so delusion is “Buddhahood-delusion”. Pastdelusion lives in future Buddhahood, so Buddhahood is“delusion-Buddhahood”. The same goes also for the famousTiantai claim that “insentient beings have theBuddha-nature”—i.e., that rocks and stones and all other thingswith no awareness have the all-pervasive unconditional nature ofawareness: awareness is always nonawareness-awareness (all awarenessexists-with nonawareness, e.g., the objects of awareness, which arenot themselves aware), nonawareness is always awareness-nonawareness(i.e., nonawareness is determinately nonawareness only as contrastedby awareness to awareness itself, and is intrinsically inseparablefrom whatever awareness might exist in the universe, simply by virtueof the inseparability of all existence).

The controversial idea of “the Buddha-nature of insentientbeings” is developed by Zhanran in hisJingangpi usinga slightly different approach to the Three Truths, focusing on thetrope ofspace as advanced as a metaphor for Buddha-nature inthe MahāyānaNirvana Sutra, in its character ofall-pervasiveness, ineradicability, and indivisibility, and thenon-different/non-identical relation of all regions of space to eachother and of each region of space to whatever possible object canoccupy it. But here too the central argument is the inseparableintersubsumption of the two opposite terms: sentience is alwaysinsentience-sentience, insentience is alwayssentience-insentience.

One way to think about this is to consider a magnet. It has anorth and a south “pole” to it. If we wanted to separatethe north from the south pole, we might try cutting it in half. Butwhen we do so, we find that each halfstill has both a northand a south pole. No matter how many times we slice it, the total setof different characteristics pertaining to the whole are also found inthat separate part: northness and southness are, in their entirety,found in what was formerly, in the context of the whole magnet, purelythe north part, and also in the former south part. This is how it isin the Tiantai universe: the universe is one big magnet, but insteadof just a north and a south, it has 3000 different characteristicaspects: meness, youness, trains, oceans, dogs, soups, historicalincidents, smiles, tears, delusion, enlightenment. If we try toisolate any of these, however, what we end up with is another entire“magnet”, which also has all 3000 aspects to it: thismeness, it turns out, also has its youness part, its train part, itsocean part, its dog part, and so on. When I face you, it is you-and-mefacing you-and-me. It is me-and-all-worlds facingall-worlds-and-me. It is the entire universe facing the entireuniverse. We are always different, because wherever we go, there is ayou and a me, two different aspects, never merging into a blankindifferent mush of a single quality. But since me-and-you iscontrasted to me-and-you, there is really no contrast at all: the samething is found on both sides of the contrast. We are neither the samenor different. We are divided from ourselves, impossible to unify intoa simple unity, butfor that very reason we are impossible toseparate from one another. Each of us, at each moment, are, in a word,absolute, the Center as which all appears, and which is appearing inand as all things. All things are our transformation bodies, we arethe transformation body of all things.

4.2 Buddhahood as Full Realization of Dung Beetlehoodet alia

This also means that, the more fully one realizes that one is anyparticular being, the more one realizes that he or she is also allother, contrasted, things as well. This is how traditional Buddhist“non-self” doctrine comes to play out in Tiantai. I thinkI am already this self, Brook, but in reality, Buddhism tells me, I amnot yet really any such self—for to be a self is to beunconditional, and that is impossible for “me”, aconditional determinate being. Also, I am not yetenlightened—for enlightenment is unconditionality, the onlyfreedom from suffering. To become unconditioned, as I’d thought I waswhen I thought I was a self, is to become enlightened. This non-selfis the only thing that really fulfills my previous lust to be a self,to actuallybe me. I cannot become this by being me as adeterminate being to the exclusion of all other beings, nor otherbeings to the exclusion of me. Rather, by the Three Truths, I can onlybecome more and more me by becoming more and more everything else, andthat is what it means to become more and more enlightened, and tobecome more me, more unconditionally this specific me. To“become what I am”, to be a more fully realized version ofmyself, is to see myself, Brook specifically, as unconditional, whichmeans as omnipresent and eternal, which means as expressing itself inand as all things, which also means, conversely, intersubsumed, i.e.,as an expression of all other things, as somethingas whichall other things are appearing. I cannot be myself until I am aBuddha, but I cannot be a Buddha until I can be more fully (i.e., moreunconditionally, more all-pervasively) myself, and that means beingmore fully a devil, a fool, a table, a spaceship, or, in SimingZhili’s example, a dung beetle. Buddhist practice is the progressivelyfuller manifestation of my latent Buddhahood—which means alsothe progressively fuller manifestation of my latent Dung-Beetlehood,and indeed, my allegedly long ago already actual but really hithertomerely latent Brookhood.

5. Practice and Doctrinal Diversity

Tiantai is encyclopedic in its approach to Buddhist practice; asone might expect in light of its view of “exclusion” ingeneral, it excludes nothing. Hence in Tiantai works we findextensive, detailed cataloging of a huge diversity of traditionalBuddhist practices, from rituals and devotions to meditations andcontemplations of all kinds, derived from all strata of previousBuddhist culture. This accords not only with the philosophicalobjection to the possibility of any final mutual exclusion of entitiesrehearsed above, but also to theLotus Sutra notionofupāya, and the expansion of the range of ConventionalTruth in the Three Truths: the diversity of sentient beings islimitless, their specific delusions and attachments and sufferings areof limitless specific types, and thus the appropriate remedialpractices and doctrines for them are limitless. This is also thejustification for the “trivialist” position that allpossible claims are true, for “true” in the Tiantaicontext meansonly a remedialupāya serving as a raft toovercome itself, but doing so by totalization of itself, therebyundermining itself, expressing itself in and as all other things,intersubsuming all other truth-claims, thereby become all the morepresent as all the more absent.

5.1 Self-Overcoming of Doctrinal Hierarchy into Omniultimacy

Tiantai takes the non-dualistic ideas suggested by theLotusSutra in fables and unexplained narrative hints, and adapts theresources of Emptiness and the Two Truths to give them a fullphilosophical explanation and practical application for Buddhistpractice. TheLotus Sutra had madeupāya thecenterpiece of Buddhism, and asserted a unity of all practices in theOne Vehicle, all leading toward Buddhahood. Tiantai follows this leadand constructs a vast and complex system for accounting for andintegrating all known forms of Buddhist and even non-Buddhistpractice, all of which are acceptable skillful means appropriate andwholesome for different persons and times. It rejects nothing, but itorganizes all known teachings and practices into an interconnectedsystem. The system has an interesting double structure: the first timethrough, it appears to be hierarchical, putting the Mahāyāna above theHinayana and theLotus above the rest of the Mahāyāna. Butthe idea of redefinition of identity through recontextualization isapplied here, and when the hierarchical crown of theLotushas done its work, it has the retroactive effect of making all theother parts equal as aspects of the One Vehicle. That is, no teaching,practice or behavior has only a single meaning: its meaning isdetermined by the context in which it is viewed. So any given doctrineor practice can be seen as both the ultimate truth and as a morepartial and only locally relevant, or lesser, truth. The Tiantaisystem of integrating all the various teachings and ideas andperspectives in the world provides a system for seeing everythingtwice, three times, infinite times, reassessing and developing themeanings of each item as it comes into broader and broader relations.The Hinayana teaching is, in the narrower context, a“lesser” truth. But in the context of the One Vehicle, itis itself an instantiation of the One Vehicle, and even gives uniqueexpression to it: hence the claim (based on a clever strong misreadingof a line from Kumārajīva’s translation of theLotus:決了聲聞法為諸經之王) that the Hinayana doctrine(rather than theLotus itself) is itself the Highest of AllTeachings. The same goes for all other particular ideas, beliefs,practices. Since nothing has only one meaning, everythingcanmean anything. The interesting question about any proposition isnotwhether it is true (it always is), buthow. TheTiantai “classification of teachings” is an intricate andcomplex way of spelling out in what context and in what way eachdoctrine means each of the many things it means.

5.2 The Contemplation of Mind as the Three Thousand (觀心guanxin, 一念三千yiniansanqian)

The way in which each and any of these alternate methods ordoctrines is recontextualized to promote the desired Tiantaiimplication is through the supplementation of the Three Truths view ofany and every possible content. Tiantai meditation most centrallyapplies a method called “the contemplation of mind”,(觀心guanxin) given its most famous formulationin Zhiyi’s unfolding of一念三千yiniansanqian (Japanese:ichinensanzen), which means something like: “One Moment ofExperience as Three Thousand Worlds”. The “threethousand” is of course a way of saying “everything”,but it is really something a bit more than that. For of course, asZhiyi himself points out, any number would be an equally accuratepossible way to talk about the totality of all things, from none toinfinity. This number, “three thousand”, is concoctedspecifically with meditational practice in mind. Here’s how it’sderived:

Ten Realms ×	Ten Realms ×	Ten Suchnesses ×	Three Worlds=3000
Buddhahood	Buddhahood	Appearance	Five Aggregates
Bodhisattva	Bodhisattva	Nature
Pratyekabuddha^[1]	Pratyekabuddha	Components
Sravaka^[2]	Sravaka	Capability
Gods	Gods	Action	Sentient Beings
Humans	Humans	Causes
Asuras^[3]	Asuras	Conditions
Animals	Animals	Effects
Hungry Ghosts	Hungry Ghosts	Consequences	Environment
Purgatories	Purgatories	Ultimate Equality and Equal Ultimacy

Please note a few peculiarities of this way of listing “whatexists”. First, special care is taken here to include both“purgatories” （i.e., the demonic thoughts,practices and consequences of extreme subjective delusion andsuffering) on the one hand, and “Buddhas”, (theenlightened thoughts, practices and consequences of the greatestwisdom and liberation) on the other hand. This is important, becauseit cautions us against viewing these subjective states, good or evil,as mere epiphenenomena that are somehow outside the ultimatereality. They are themselves included in the ultimate reality. Byincluding these terms, Tiantai guards against a vague notion of“everything” which might lend itself to thinking that onlya pure or neutral substance—mind, matter, energy—is whatis real, or that the values and perspectives, good and bad, painfuland pleasant, that living beings experience are not part of the“everything”. The “everything” that isincluded in each moment of experience, and which is eternallyineradicable, includes all those good and bad subjective states aswell.

Second, we have two important reduplications. The ten realms areall the states in which a sentient being might find him or herself inthe Buddhist universe, from the lowest ignorance and suffering to thehighest bliss and enlightenment. They are often interpretedsymbolically: Buddhahood representing a moment of enlightenedexperience, Bodhisattvahood a moment of compassion, Sravakahood amoment of quiescence or renunciation of the worldly, Godhood a momentof great worldly bliss and power, Asurahood a moment of egoistic rageand combativeness, animals ignorance, purgatories suffering. Onereason to read these as states that any being might undergo is thateach of the ten realms is listed twice. This is because each realm“includes” or “instantiates” all the other tenrealms. That is, each can appear “as” any of the others,and in fact nothing appears which is not always “as”something else. A human-bodhisattva, an animal-god, a Buddha-demon, anAsura-Sravaka, etc. A bodhisattva appears as a human, or an animal, ora Buddha, or an Asura. But as we’ve seen, this also means a humanappears as a bodhisattva, or a demon as an animal, or a Sravaka as ahungry ghost, etc. Of course this goes onad infinitum: eachof these included realms further includes all ten realms, and soon. The 10 times 10 is just to point to this factor of mutualinclusion, and make sure it is accounted for in our meditativecontemplation of “what exists”.

The other duplication comes in the “Three Worlds”. Wehave “the five aggregates” but also “sentientbeings”. Actually, these are two ways of looking at the samething. Early Buddhism taught that what we call a sentientbeing—you, me, Bill, Dave—is actually a set of fiveaggregates, momentarily arising and perishing impersonal processes ofform, sensation, perception, volition and consciousness. One (theaggregates) was real, the other (the alleged “self”) was apernicious illusion. The Three Thousand includes both. In other words,it does not exclude the illusions about things among the totality of“what exists”—as we’ve seen, all things are equallyillusions and equally true. The view of you as Bill is one item in thelist; the view of you as five impersonal aggregate processes isanother item on the list. Here too we have a shorthand way of pointingto a larger principle, and a goad to keep it in mind in ourcontemplation of “all that exists”. We are not to think ofa set of real entities lined up side by side, mutually exclusive, ofwhich there may be some additional erroneous views. Rather, theerroneous view are part of all that exists, indeed all that exists issome erroneous (i.e., one-sided, locally coherent) view. There is no“thing” as such: a thing is just a way of appearing, andcomes with a viewpoint upon it. Tiantai insists further that to have asingle viewpoint requires at least one additional viewpoint, andsoad infinitum. Normally we drain off the ambiguity and callit “subjectivity” or “free will” or “theunknown future” to one side and leave the “reality”on the other side, calling it “objectivity” or“determinate fact” or “the settled past”. InTiantai, these are inseparable, merely aspects artificially separatedoff from the whole, which is always both fixed and open, locallycoherent and globally incoherent.

Now once we have gone through thinking about all possible objectsof experience this way, one by one, almost in the manner of a list outof Walt Whitman’sLeaves of Grass, we apply the Three Truths,the neither-same-nor-different relation, tothis thoughtitself. First temporally: this whole line of thinking requiredsome time to go through. Are the previous moments of thinking same asor different from the present one now considering this question?Neither. All other moments are present hereas thismoment—neither same nor different, the Three Truths. Next we considerthe external world, including my sense organs and brain, that servedas the efficient causes for the arising of this moment of thoughtabout the Three Thousand realms of possible experience: is the actualworld and my body different from or same as this moment ofthoughtabout them all? Neither. The external world ispresent hereas this consciousness of it, neither same nordifferent. Next we consider all other possible thoughts orexperiences, the contrast with which is what makes this momentdeterminate as itself: are they the same or different from it?Neither. All other experiences are present hereas thismoment of experience. I experience one moment of experience as atotality, including my illusory presence as the experiencer. The nextmoment, when new contents appear, will be experienced asmoreof orother expressions of the same moment. I experiencethe eternity-temporality of this moment continuing to show itself inand as the neither-same-nor-different array of all other possibleexperiences, beings, ideas, moments. This is the experience ofBuddhahood-as-all-sentient-beings.

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