selfhood, a first cause, and so on) are not even con-
ventional truth, but are simply falsehoods and errors.
Zhiyi reinterprets the Madhyamaka position as imply-
ing the “three truths”: emptiness, provisional positing,
and the mean, which includes both and signifies their
synonymy. The relation between these three is under-
stood on the model of the Lotus Sutra’s doctrine of
“opening the provisional to reveal the real,” which an-
nuls any hierarchy between conventional and ultimate
truth, and also expands conventional truth so as to in-
clude any provisionally posited assertion or cognition
without exception. Zhiyi’s claim is that these three as-
pects are not only on precisely equal footing and of
equal ultimacy, but that each is in fact simply a way of
stating the other two; the three are synonymous.
The three truths and the doctrine of
inherent entailment
The reasoning behind the three truths doctrine follows
the traditional Buddhist doctrine of PRATITYASAMUT-
PADA(DEPENDENT ORIGINATION), which holds that
every element of experience necessarily appears “to-
gether with” other elements, which it depends upon
for its existence and determinate character. These
other, conditioning, elements, of course, also gain their
determinate character only through their dependence
on still other elements that simultaneously condition
them. But it was this determinate character that was
supposed to serve as a determining ground for the first
element. If the determiner is not determinate, the de-
termined also fails to be determined. Hence each ele-
ment is coherent only locally, in relation to a limited
set of these conditions; when all of its conditions—
including contexts, components, and precedents—are
considered, its coherence vanishes. There arises, then,
no unambiguous particular element or entity with a
univocally decidable nature. Precisely because all are
determined in dependence on conditions, they are si-
multaneously without a fixed, determinate identity.
This is the meaning of emptiness.
Elements of experience are normally taken to have
definitive identities, to be determinate, to be finite, to
have “simple location,” and to have borders or bound-
aries between themselves and what is outside them-
selves. Tiantai MEDITATION, however, calls for an inquiry
into the borders between being Xand not being X,ei-
ther in time, space, or conceptual space (i.e., the aris-
ing of a given state from its qualitatively different
antecedents, conceptual contrasts, or efficient causes).
To appear in experience at all, Xmust be “non-all,”
must be contrasted to some non-X,and must have an
“outside.” But to necessarilyhave an outside means the
outside is not really outside; the relation between the
internal and the external is itself internal. One can al-
ways ask: Is the border (spatial, temporal, or concep-
tual) part of the inside or the outside, both, or neither?
There is no coherent way to answer these questions if
to exist is assumed to mean “simply located.” Hence,
the interface always proves unintelligible, and the out-
side proves paradoxically both ineradicable and im-
possible, since it always proves to be equally internal,
and hence not an outside at all. Therefore, the inside
(X) is equally ineradicable and impossible (bukede,
bukeshe). Like space, each determinate existent is si-
multaneously a merely nominal reality, is unob-
structed and unobstructing, is beyond being and
nonbeing, and is all-pervasive, present equally in the
opposite of itself, in contrast to which it was originally
defined. Precisely the same analysis applies to the dif-
ference between those defining borders that “deter-
mine as X” and those that “determine as Y,” which is
why Zhiyi goes on to assert that to be determined as
Xis always at the same time to be determined as Y,
and all other possible quiddities.
In sum, what is only locally coherent is thereby glob-
ally incoherent. It is what it is only because the hori-
zon of relevant contexts has been arbitrarily limited,
but the fact that all being is necessarily contextualized
(arises with qualitative othernesses) means that any
such limit is ultimately arbitrary, and there are more
relevant contexts that can be brought to bear in every
case. The “mean” signifies that these two are merely
alternate statements of the same fact, which necessar-
ily appears in these two contrasted ways. Determi-
nateness, thought through to the end, turns out to be
ambiguity, and vice versa. Hence, ambiguity and de-
terminateness are no longer “other” to one another,
and each is itself, just as it is, “absolute” (i.e., free of
dependence on a relationship to an outside). There-
fore, determinatenessis a synonym for ambiguity,and
either is a synonym for absoluteness(the ultimate re-
ality and value, “eternal, blissful, self, and pure”). Any
of these always signifies all three aspects. Moreover, de-
terminateness is never simply “determinateness as such
or in general”: It always means precisely thisdetermi-
nateness and precisely all other possible determinate-
ness, which Zhiyi formulates for convenience as “the
three thousand quiddities.” Any possible experienced
content is necessarily dependently co-arisen, which is
to be provisionally posited as precisely this (like-this
appearance, etc.), which is to be empty, which is to
be readable equally as provisional positing and asTIANTAISCHOOL