Madhyamaka gives two truths, conventional and ultimate, and the relation between them has occupied commentators ever since. Zhiyi proposed a third term. A thing is empty of any nature of its own; it is nonetheless provisionally present and can be named, counted and acted on; and the middle is holding both without letting either collapse into the other. The third truth is not a synthesis reached after the first two but the way the first two are true. From it follows the Tiantai claim that each moment of experience contains the whole of reality, and the school's characteristic refusal to rank the ordinary below the ultimate. Japanese Tendai inherited the formulation from Saicho and it remained the school's doctrinal core through the medieval period, when the Kamakura founders were all trained inside it before leaving Mount Hiei to teach something narrower.
Facts
Position Profile
Principal ProponentZhiyi, who built the Tiantai system on the formulation; carried to Japan by Saicho, where it remained the doctrinal core of Tendai through the medieval period. 1 Opposing PositionThe Madhyamaka two truths, conventional and ultimate, which the third term is offered to complete rather than to replace. 1 Status
Status Within the TraditionThe teaching of one school or lineage within the tradition 1Tradition: Tiantai Standing as a Comparative CategoryA standard analytic category in the study of religion 2 Doctrinal CategoryMind, Self and Emptiness 1 Doctrinal category (class) Origins
Held ByTiantai and its Japanese successor Tendai. 1 Structure
StructureA thing is empty of any nature of its own; it is nonetheless provisionally present and can be named, counted and acted on; and the middle is holding both without letting either collapse into the other. The third is not a synthesis reached after the first two but the way in which the first two are true. 1 Learn More
Three Thousand Realms in a Single Moment of Thought
Zhiyi worked the threefold truth out most fully in the Mohe Zhiguan, his manual of calming and contemplation delivered as lectures and later written down by his disciple Guanding. There the doctrine produces its most famous corollary, that the three thousand realms of existence, every possible state of being multiplied across every possible world, are present whole in a single moment of ordinary thought. The number itself is built from the school's own arithmetic of worlds and states rather than chosen for effect, but the claim it serves is the same one carried by the three truths themselves, that emptiness, provisional existence and the middle are not stages a practitioner passes through toward something better but three descriptions of exactly what is already present in this moment, none of them more final than the others. Meditation practice follows from the claim rather than illustrating it. If the whole of reality is already contained in one moment of mind, then contemplating that single moment with sufficient attention is not a shortcut to something greater, it is the practice itself, complete. Saicho carried the formulation to Mount Hiei and it remained Tendai's doctrinal spine through the medieval centuries in which Honen, Shinran, Dogen and Nichiren all trained there before each left to found a narrower school of his own around one piece of what Tiantai had held together.
Connections
Attributed To
Source Tiantai (Wikipedia)
Belongs to Tradition
Saicho brought Zhiyi's three truths from China, and holding together emptiness, provisional existence and the middle remains the school's doctrinal core.
Source Saicho: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai SchoolPaul Groner
The three truths, that a thing is empty, is provisionally there, and is both at once, are Tiantai's own contribution and the formulation Zhiyi used to move past the Indian two truths.
Source Emptiness and Omnipresence: An Essential Introduction to Tiantai BuddhismBrook Ziporyn
Positions on This Question
The three truths are held in Nichiren Buddhism, taken from Zhiyi and treated as the doctrinal content the daimoku carries.
Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.
The three truths are held in Nichiren Shoshu through the Tiantai inheritance.
Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.
The three truths are held in Soka Gakkai through the Tiantai inheritance carried in Nichiren's writings.
Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.
Sources
1. Emptiness and Omnipresence: An Essential Introduction to Tiantai Buddhism
2. Saicho: The Establishment of the Japanese Tendai School
Paul Groner, University of Hawaii Press, 1984
Tiantai (Wikipedia)
Attributed To: Zhiyi, Article textQuote, Attributed To: Zhiyi, Article text
Zhili's major criticisms included attacking Chan's failure to understand the necessity of the use of words and scriptural study as part of practice as well as criticizing Zongmi's view of a pure mind as the buddha-nature, arguing instead that the "three truths" as taught by Zhiyi are the ultimate reality.
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