188 CHAPTER EIGHTAs with all categories in Chih-i's thought, these flavors are relative: Be-
cause no words can adequately express Buddha-nature, all teachings are grad-
ual to some extent; because all the teachings come from an Awakened mind,
they are all partially sudden. This relativity is what gives Chih-i's categories,
which otherwise would have become little more than sorting boxes, nuance
and complexity. Because they are relative, they are also interpenetrating. The
realization of this point constitutes the highest teaching: that principle cannot
be found apart from phenomena. Even though distinctions are made between
shallow and profound, and so forth, all truths are universally coextensive. The
entire cosmos is immanent in a moment of thought and is perceived simulta-
neously by the Awakened mind as empty, substantial, both, and neither.
To show the way to this realization, Chih-i wrote the most extensive and
comprehensive meditation guide that had ever appeared in China. Again, he
made a distinction between sudden, gradual, and variable methods. "Sudden;'
in the context of practice, means that the method focuses immediately on
Buddha-nature as its object from the moment that bodhicitta occurs. In grad-
ual methods, one makes use of various expedient objects, such as the breath,
nienjo (the repetition of the Buddha's name), or contemplation of the Lotus
Sfitra (the method that had given rise to Chih-i's own first experience of great
samadhi). Here again, the distinctions are relative. Buddha-nature is present in
all mental moments; thus all meditation methods are in a sense sudden. Be-
cause in the ultimate sense Buddha-nature transcends the subject/ object di-
chotomy, it cannot be an object. Thus all methods are to some extent gradual.
The complete method entailed contemplating the mind in all postures, simply
viewing its passing states as partial expressions of Buddha-nature. However,
Chih-i advised that contemplation of mind be practiced in conjunction with
the more gradti'a'l methods; otherwise, simply viewing good and bad states
coming and going, one might be misled into believing that there was no prac-
tical need to distinguish right and wrong. In this manner, his view of the total
practice encompassed the particulars without denying their validity.
Issues of sudden and gradual, verbal doctrine and practice, and principle
and phenomena coalesce in Chih-i's analysis of the question of the identity
between the mind and Buddha-nature. In the course of one's practice, one
proceeds step-by-step through six levels of identity, beginning with identity in
principle-the identity that adheres between principle and phenomena in
general, even before acquaintance with the Buddha's teaching-moving on to
verbal identity, that is, the intellectual understanding that the mind and Bud-
dha-nature are identical, and then developing through three stages of practice
until culminating in ultimate identity, the full attainment of Buddhahood.
One had to understand these six levels at the outset, Chih-i maintained, for
otherwise one would be led either to the arrogance of thinking that one was
already fully identical with Buddha-nature before the practice, or into dis-
couragement in thinking that one had nothing in common with the goal.
Again, the complete view overcomes the limitations inherent in an either/ or
dichotomy, encompassing and transcending the partial truth and falsity of one-
sided views.